1) APT was cancelled due to the fire smoke, which I am very grateful they did for the sake of the core actors (who can't afford to destroy their voices/lungs for one performance in this extreme wildfire smoke) even more than for the other staff and guests. They said they would honor tickets for any price range at any show any night the rest of the season. I suggested everyone in the group text plans still come to MCW for cocktails after 5pm (to which I was the last one to get there because of how late my grandma's appointment ran) and we already rescheduled ordered our tickets for our whole group to see The Liar on Sept 9 (the day that i originally said we would go but then my maman insisted she needed to keep all of September free of theatre tickets in case my parents were heading to their place in Montana at some undefined potential date in September -- as Crissy winked at me before she said tonight, "It's the date you originally said we should choose. I've just learned that whenever Dani insists on something completely illogical especially related to timing, like which day or time to do something, there's a reason even if she doesn't yet know it. So I'd rather not fight to change it because it's easier to just listen to the elf witch precog when she gets stubborn irrational than scramble to change plans last minute later." She's not wrong, but sometimes even I fight my irrational intuition and precogs because they make no damn sense so I can hardly blame anyone else for trying to plan logically even if we always end up with what I had said we should do.) But anyway, that's done. So postponing big group to a Saturday in September picnic and play in the wood. And there were half price rush tickets at APT for Our Town (the only play up the hill that Crissy and I didn't commit to buying when tickets first went on sale.) So Sat morning Farmer's market and brunch plans with a friend coming up from Chicago then Saturday evening plans in Spring Green for the first play of the season up at APT.

2) Got some news over the weekend and worse news last night checking in after the scans and even worse worse news today after the rush biopsy results about a very dear friend in Kentucky. Things are getting scheduled moving fast, but also it's a very aggressive cancer type soooo, yeah..... I intentionally sent pictures of love thinking of them toasting to their health with the remainder of my bottle of Russell's 6 year barrel aged rye we picked up for our front row during WB3 "flights" last time we saw them at ROMP last year and then sent them lots of happy doggo pictures of Waffles. (They are VERY much dog people. While we were all gin and bourbon drunk at the bluegrass festival and I was making friends with every pupper that crossed my path, I made a comment about wanting milkbones for all the dogs at ROMP music festival to help seed even more joy through the crowd and one of the friends who used to be a vet lit up at the idea. So the next morning at the store I insisted we buy him a box of milkbones for him to be able to give every dog the next day of the festival. he was so delighted grinning so huge as he wandered around the fest wearing a sunflower skirt as a halo on his hat handing out biscuits to every dog whose owner gave permission -- and he and his common law wife continued that tradition to bring milkbones to add happy puppy joy to the fest this year.) He's the one with the cancer diagnosis that isn't public and members of his immediate family don't even know yet because he wants to tell them in person... And my heart hurts over it and I asked to be kept in the loop if they need anything including short notice company in Nashville or Knoxville for the oncology specialist treatments so she won't be by herself waiting and that if time/energy allows to let me know when would be a good time to come see them no matter how the treatment options/timing/efficacy goes.

3) Tonight after everyone left except me and Waffles, I discovered the Danish folk trio Dreamers' Circus and have been going down the rabbit hole of all their songs ever since because I am seriously obsessed with EVERY composition of theirs I have heard so far and they make me feel the "hold perfectly still in case you break the dream" spellbound by every second of every recorded performance I can find.  Their music, all of it instrumental, just brings a lilting lyrical uplifting joy bubbling up from my soul. This video, City Gardens from the Mons Sessions was the first I discovered: 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kQiTsAMd4sc" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The entire new album of Blue White Gold is absolutely stunning!!!!! Their songs bring the same sort of joy in the pure instrumental arrangements and style as George Winston always has. And very very soon I'm going to have to order everything of theirs to make sure I will always have it regardless of what streaming platforms do because I cannot get over how dearly I adore every single melody and every single instrumental choice of every song of theirs!!!!!

Life is a balance and dance of all the intense emotions crashing about pulling at you. And you have to hold on to the beauty and joy when it finds you. And these melodies, these arrangements and unique instrumental choices that paint the most gorgeous sonic landscapes for my synethesia, they are joy and brightness in the darkness that I intend to hold onto and keep! And Denmark is far from me and where they typically tour is across oceans from where I am, but i aspire for when i will get to finally see them play these songs live and the joy that will bring my heart!

4) We were still finding shards of glass INSIDE the shelves/door of the fridge tonight from the coffee pot I shattered yesterday when it surprised me as it fell and I mentally blasted it with energy to shove it away from hitting me or breaking into the watermelon juice for cocktails that I was holding.... Whoops.

This is the rocks glass I was telling you about that cracked right where my thumb was when I picked it up with my right hand to bring the watermelon lemonade vodka cocktail to someone.

Whoopsiedoo! If you notice, I'm only holding that glass in my left hand for the pictures and I was very careful to only drink my wine tonight holding the glass in my left hand.... I don't yet trust anything glass anywhere near my right hand.

Your girl has got to find something to heal or fight or banish...it ain't good to keep this much energy in your skin without using it to some purpose..... The screaming and suffering of everything dying in this drought and now the firesmoke suffocating all the happy bees and bird friends and critters has got me looking for an energetic fight if I can't DO anything to save this dying earth from the suffering humans have inflicted upon her.... Humans are capable of so much beauty and so much good and yet this is how we repay the gift of goodness we were collectively born into?! It hurts to hear the psychic screaming of so much life suffering and so needlessly because of the cancer of all consuming greed and colonial expansion seeking more to conquer ever more....

 I am entering into the third day of the worst non-migraine headache from the Quebec fires smoke... In case you were wondering how bad it is right now:

It's been getting steadily worse all night. And I have intentionally turned all HEPA filters up to highest settings (even installed a brand new one in my bedroom) and have been wearing my n95 outside and i can still smell the smoke and it still makes my throat itch gives me laryngitis. Also, the particulates make my eyes burn horribly enough to make me minimize my use of contacts when the air quality is this bad. (small micro particulates and gases can get themselves embedded within the soft plastic and do damage to your eyes when you put them back on -- it's why even with vented goggles, you still had to wear glasses because contacts were not allowed in any chem, o chem, a chem, or biochem lab work i did.) I will have to wear my contacts later today though after this sleep because I am taking grandma to an afternoon appointment then heading to Spring Green for the first play of the season! (The Liar, translation from the French play; big group of us.) For that much driving, I need to wear my contacts because my prescription is bad enough that my peripheral vision is super blurred around the frames of glasses so I try not to drive much without wearing contacts instead. Even when the air quality is this bad....

But also, the air quality is worse right now because I am trying to move the worst of the smoke we will get through before we sit outside for picnic and outdoor play BUT hold off the much needed rain (the front that will drive the smoke back eastward from here) until after the play is done. So it's delicate business weather witching for my evening June 28 plans to be optimal and it means right now it's terrible outside... my poor bird and bee friends..... This is so hard on them with how they breathe.... Harder on them than my wild critter animal friends....

Last several days, everything smells like smoke and the skies are grey and sunrise isn't a brightening, the sun is very red disc in sky until  nearly midday. 

Bedtime now. Going to need to get up to shower and then make food and get ready before taking my grandma to her appointments. And budget the extra exhaustion for the taking Waffles outside portions because even through the n95, the bad air makes me so dang tired physically. Not spirit energy, I have so much of that in me I was shattering glassware in the evening just by touching it. (A coffee pot that was on the top of the fridge fell toward me while my hands were full when I opened the door and i reflexively shove it away from me with energy so it shattered when it got near me then fell to the floor, i blamed the shattering on when it hit the floor. And then later I was making cocktails for me and my parents and Sarah and I touched one of the rocks glasses with my right hand (power flows in my left out my right general state of being like breathing, but in big works where I am conduit to a lot of power, it flows out both hands) and where my thumb touched the glass I grabbed with my right hand, it cracked the glass horizontally then straight up to the rim, like a J. I can grab a picture of it at work if i remember.)

 Anyway, the smoke makes my limbs heavy and slow and my body exhausted, but the amount of raw spirit energy flowing through me right now while my body is so tired is insane. Not sure why I'm humming so live wire, but if I can't find a reason or way to use it, I'm definitely going to break more things accidentally....

P. S. Aaaaaand when I checked right before posting this and sleeping, it's even worse.... 

Bet it hits over 250 before I fall fully asleep. I wonder if it's still this bad tomorrow if we should reschedule 1) my grandma's appointment (as hard as the glaucoma specialist is to see) because my grandma is in her mid 80s and has asthma so two reasons any exposure to the outdoor air would be horrible for her right now and 2) APT because that can't be good for us or the actors if it's this bad this evening... Hopefully they will consider rescheduling/honoring tickets another night, for the actors as much as the patrons.... Although, Spring Green is north and west of here so they are at least a bit better air quality than we are in Madison. East of us is even worse....

 I finally emailed Erin (my vet for the last 15 years) to tell her about Audrey's death back in January that happened while she was out of office. I cried every time I attempted writing it these last five months. And I cried while writing it and it was too long but rereading it trying to edit it made me start crying all over again..... But Spock's annual visit and vaccines were supposed to be scheduled 6/18 and I couldn't schedule him back with Erin at All for Pets without letting her know about Audrey making sure she wanted me to continue with her knowing I do not want one of her three colleagues involved in future care of my fur babies due to the mismatch of our communication styles but I didn't want to schedule him somewhere else (probably with Dr. Mason at Faircrest Veterinary) without letting Erin know why.... And then I need to get Waffles into a local vet, but she's not due for her vaccines til September and her last dose of heartworm meds is August 1 so if possible I think it makes sense to take her in late August, y'know?

But anyway. I have needed to tell Erin about Audrey (I'm still receiving postcards, texts, and emails about needing to schedule Audrey's appointments for her annual exam and vaccines at the same time as Spock...) So I told her the story and why I need her to understand I would rather go somewhere else entirely than have Dr. Gallagher involved in the care of my fur babies but I like and trust Erin over these last 15 years and would like best to keep seeing her. (But if not her Dr. Mason.  So I gave her the information and asked her what she would prefer as far as scheduling for Spock and moving forward with my living fur babies care needs.... I gave the facts of what happened and I didn't throw Dr. Gallagher under the bus in that I chalked it up to mismatched communication styles and acknowledging she was walking into a hard situation didn't know Audrey or me.

That was hard to write. And it's long email, but attempts to edit it just made me cry and cry and cry tonight. So eventually I just sent it.... Because Audrey died January 21 and it was midnight of June 21 when I sent the email.... And Spock NEEDS his appointment scheduled somewhere so I'm out of time waiting until telling the story didn't make me cry, y'know? 

Bah.I'm emotionally exhausted now and trying not to cry. So I'm going to heads down get some inputting done at work until my emotions are not so overwhelming before I drive home. (Libra sun & Mercury, Pisces rising, Capricorn moon, Scorpio Venus -- my emotional reaction try to be Capricorn focused driven triage stoicism can get through anything without letting anyone see me cry while my inner self and communication style want to be just/fair, and then my outer persona and my love relations are all fucking deep water emotions empath feel everything intensely enough to drown in it if you can't calm it which my moon sign says "O absolutely not going to drown in these stormy seas hurricane of feelings." When I hurt and I'm sad, it's fucking messy between the uncontrollable intensity of the emotions and my desire not to let them show and to conquer them rather than letting them conquer me and my insatiable need to be scales of justice fair regardless of how I feel personally or how wounded it makes me.... And then a Sag Mars in that mix -- so how I deal with confrontation is fire sign archer blunt truth speaking philosopher which supports the Capricorn approach to deal with the drowning in all those deep feels of the Pisces rising and Scorpio Venus in me.... In case you never noticed how long and hard and arduous it is for me to deal with things that hurt me or touch my heart deeply..) 

I'm relieved to have finally written a version of that email and sent it as much as I cried trying to write it and cry thinking about what I had to write and the story I had to share in it... Even if it was too long and it will be hard for her when she sees it in the morning and I have no idea what it will do within the office or if she will want to keep seeing Spock (who she has seen for over a decade) and me and Waffles in August or if she would rather I go elsewhere if I won't trust her colleague..... 

Happy Midsummer's Eve.....

P.S. Went strawberry picking this morning. June 20 is almost always the day we go actually.... So have been eating strawberries all day/night. Planning to go picking again at Carandale on Friday morning to try a different variety. Presuming they're open. 

 

So I only picked 6lbs this year, less than Sarah or even Crissy. And I pretty much guarantee they will be gone by Friday morning, just eaten as is not baked or frozen or anything. Gotta get a year's worth of strawberries into me while they're seasonally amazing, lol.

I love northern strawberries during strawberry season!!!! They're so complex and wildly different than grocery store California/Mexico strawberries

 I don't really have much to say right now. Maybe I should, but I don't. There's a lot going on inside me, mostly fragments and pieces I can't quite see clearly before they disappear back into the tangles. It's like koi in a pond, flashes and glimpses of part and then disappearing again below the surface. 

And for some reason, just now there was a chord progression that made my brain spit out the fragment of lyric "Come back to me baby, give me one more sleepless night" which I was NOT expecting. Strangely, it wasn't the recording of the song I have heard from the album, it was like a whispered wish in the same room behind me like if I just turned my head I'd see him not just hear that desire. And it was definitely a subconscious thing mixed with hearing a piano chord progression similarity because all night I've been listening to different piano covers on the Youtube channel of Francesco Parrino (they're all so lovely and beautiful and I really do love his playing style can listen for hours and hours regardless what he's playing. I'm more than a little obsessed with how he plays piano, lol.)  And the thing is, it's late night at work, just me and my dog, and the piano cover arrangements of Francesco Parrino that I'm watching/listening to tonight while I get some inputting/filing done. And so there's nobody HERE to have whisper sang it like that. And yet, I swear I just heard that line clear as clear, as if sung the same room as me.

Makes no damn sense to me. But my life is wyrd and sometimes it be like that... And somehow, a piano chord progression in a cover arrangement shook loose inside my brain earwormed me with If I'd Known I Loved Her sung in a way I've never heard with my ears but true as true can be as if it were in this room.

Anyway. That was wyrd and unexpected and inexplicable and happened after i started this was no part of what made me start writing here. What I started this post to share was a picture of one of the things I did today to clear off part of my desk where I had a stack of things I needed to epoxy. (Mostly books that the glue cracked due to age and the binding needed to be glued back around the pages.) But one of my projects I did this afternoon was this: 

It's a project been on my desk since last summer/autumn, I found the plate in a random ass antique store across the street from a venue I was at. And I decided it was too perfect I had to have it for $2. I don't own many decorative plates, but I decided I needed to figure out the right magnetic poetry to superglue to the bear because my only other decorative plate is of Victor Hugo with his arms crossed over his chest looking incredibly annoyed at having his picture taken (I received it as a random house warming gift back in college) and while Chris was visiting from NYC spending some time alone at my flat to work on an idea in his head, I had gone into work and when I came back he'd taken off the fridge placed on the decorative plate siting on my dining room table because I didn't know what to do with it the words "screw you."  It made me laugh so hard that I immediately glued the words in place just exactly where he had placed them so that I could always look at it and laugh.  So when I found the polar bear plate, I knew I'd have to find just the right words for him, and back in like October or so I picked out these words. And just today I finally glued them on so I can bring him back home. 

Only, when I chose those three words, my intention was "happy spirit dream" and I didn't know if it belonged as one line centered or where. But today I laid them out as "happy dream spirit" just this way and it was exactly right like something clicked in place. I didn't even realize I'd changed the order of the words in my moment of certainty until just now looking at it wondering if it's dry enough for me to take home or if I should wait til tomorrow when I'll bring the books home.

And it's an interesting shift from a linguistics perspective one I hadn't realized I had made. "happy spirit dream" makes the noun the dream with the spirit the adjective, it's about the vision dreams you see. But "happy dream spirit" makes the SPIRIT the noun, it makes it about the soul who manifest in vision dreams this way....  And when my subconscious was certain knew exactly what it wanted today, it was to make the soul/spirit the focus and the active part of the phrase, not the dreams.

This plate is going somewhere in my bedroom (I don't yet know exactly where) not the living room/reading nook where Victor Hugo is.I knew the instant I found the plate that he belonged in my bedroom, before I had considered my magnetic poetry to choose the words for him. 

Anyway. Happy dream spirit, polar bear. Fwiw, the happy part had always been the non-negotiable to my mind. That was the first word I chose for it. Then I was trying to choose between some options including "happy dream" and "happy spirit" but landed on "happy spirit dream" which is now "happy dream spirit, lol. 

And yeah, I WAS staring at my polar bear plate ready to go back home now it's been captioned when I heard the whisper sung line from if I'd Known I Loved Her as if it was being played/sung in the same room right behind me.

 In case you were wondering how my arbitrary reading goals are going, I finished Hood this morning before sunrise and I'm just over halfway through Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch and fully expect to finish it by this afternoon. (I also finished the last two sections of my re-read of Seutonnius' Twelve Caesars, the sections on Titus and Domitian, but that's less impressive than it sounds when you realize that the section on Titus is the shortest at only 5pgs since he wasn't as scandalous murderous as many other emperors and he also only reigned for 2.5 years; but that was just an ongoing intermittent palette cleanser read between novels and no part of my stated arbitrary goal with finishing the two novels.) So I will definitely be finished both of them before the new moon (which is just before midnight tonight in Central time zone -- 11:37 or something like that) of my arbitrary goal.  Because what's the point of an outlandish ridiculous arbitrary goal you set yourself if you're not going to hit it out of the park easily achieve it? The only other thing to do with an arbitrary goal is ignore it completely. 

Last night, both Crissy and I decided we did not desire to deal with meeting at 6am or the hordes of humans for the big Dane County Farmer's Market on the square so opted to go to one of the smaller Saturday Farmer's markets, the one in Research Park right near my work. It was fine, and worth it to be able to pick up specific things but not a replacement for the real deal downtown which is the 8 blocks surrounding the state capitol standard I expect of all Farmer's Markets because it's what I grew up with as my normal baseline expectation. But, it was nice to not meet until 8ish and then not have to deal with not moving crowded sea of humanity slowly shuffling around the sidewalk blocking view of all produce if you're not done by 8:30am.

I'm currently in holding pattern to head back home from work after finishing up my cup of coffee I made here to go with my chocolate croissant form Madison Sourdough and waiting til I can pause the Billy Joel playlist I had put on for Waffles while we were gone. Turning off Billy Joel playlist is very difficult and time consuming for me unless you get (un)lucky and a not so great song comes on, like Zanzibar, because you have to wait until just the perfect pause after one song finished before you hear the opening bar of the next one you love and then get excited for and have to listen to just the one more before you can go.  (This is from the girl who will literally put in the car a mix she has made of her favorite Billy Joel songs/albums and then feel the emotions so overwhelmingly at the start of each song to need to exclaim in all different variety of reactions, "O I love this song!!" to EVERY song, including when a particularly well loved one is put on repeat one by me, lol.) Honestly, it's been nearly an hour since Crissy left to go back home and Waffles gave up on me has already fallen back asleep in her kennel with the door open waiting for me to reach a good pausing place in the all Billy Joel playlist so we can head home. It's bad when your dog gives up on you as hopeless..... I'd say I'm sorry, but honestly when it comes to my love of Billy Joel songs, I regret nothing! I will be the first to admit that I am absolutely and utterly incorrigible and of all the things I've ever learned in all my lives, falling out of love with what delights me is a skill I've never yet mastered. And so, I have no regrets for any time I get to hear a Billy Joel song! Even if it ends up taking me hours to finally reach a good stopping point on my own dang playlist of Billy Joel songs. Because Billy Joel is and always has been a forever favorite of mine since I first stole my parents copy of Piano Man, lol. John Coltrane's Giant Steps was my first album I fell in love with could listen to ad nauseum start to finish on loop (it was always in my grandpa's car when he gave me a ride or picked me up after preschool because it's what i always picked so he stopped asking what I wanted and just always had Giant Steps playing in his car for me) but Billy Joel's Piano Man was my second.

Oooh! Dang it, I missed my chance after Only the Good Die Young ended because I checked a text dinging about making brunch plans with a Chi area friend coming up for Farmer's Market on July 1 -- and now it's a live version of Vienna. But also, it's Vienna! And I love this song!! I'll make it back home and make me a real breakfast (well, brunch) eventually. Eventually. I have eggs now from market and I did promise the cat we'd be back for most of the day until I need to come back to water everything in the evening.

. Also. If I ever do get married, that man is going to have to be either incredibly forgiving understanding or have as unhealthy an obsessive listening habit for Billy Joel and George Winston songs as me and my fur babies for things to work long term.....

 Gah!!!! I cannot for the life of me find the cover of Listen to Your Heart that I heard at like 2am..... It's driving me absolutely batty!!!! It's definitely not the original by Roxette that came up when I searched the lyrics, because that's where I started and it was all spangly synth and hot pink spiky vocals, not grand piano with turquoise Caribbean/Mediterranean Sea lapping over white sands in the sunshine vocals..... And the ONLY cover I could find with piano so far is a Kelly Clarkson cover from 14 years ago and the tempo is different with the phrasing slowed down from the version I heard last night and her vocals are all shades of purples/magentas anyway..... And when I looked up "listen to your heart piano version" and "listen to your heart piano cover" all I found were beautiful instrumental versions played on the piano and tutorials for how to learn the piano part -- but I did not find covers with vocals and piano that way.....  

And of course it was on a radio station that is NOT either iHeart or Audacy owned and does not have a website or app to see what songs they played.... 

I am so frustrated.... I'm listening to just the piano version on repeat because it's the closest I can get to the version I'm looking for and I love this piano version but still.... *Sigh* what's a girl got to do to get a cover of this song with piano and vocals that speak of the promise of light and new beginnings like the version of it on the radio at 2am?!?? 

Grumph.... At least there were gorgeous piano only versions (even with some fumbles missed keys because some of those parts are hard, I actually really love this arrangement by Francesco Parrino, definitely my favorite piano only version I found for the arrangement phrasing and soul of the song played through the keys) to listen to with the sunrise. And it's beautiful and I love this piano version listening to it over an hour now on repeat and plan to go down the rabbit hole of his other videos then social media follow him.  But my heart wants a version with the vocals that speaks to me of holding that spark of hope that it's not yet too late to change course to find a path that heals makes things right rather than gives up walks away. I will settle for just a piano instrumental version for now, mostly because my options are limited, but I wish it to be known I desire a cover version with piano and vocals that promise the light of hope through the cracks that there's still another better way to take.

Sometimes you wonder if this fight is worthwhile. The precious moments are all lost in the tide, yeah. They're swept away and nothing is what is seems, The feeling of belonging to your dreams. Listen to your heart, when he's calling for you. Listen to your heart, there's nothing else you can do. I don't know where you're going and I don't know why. But listen to your heart, before you tell him goodbye. And there are voices that want to be heard. So much to mention but you can't find the words. The scent of magic, the beauty that's been, When love was wilder than the wind.

 I am a couple days behind on my emails and just saw tonight that Raye Zaragoza has included Madison on her fall tour!!!! I literally started hopping up and down in my chair clapping my hands excitedly and squeeing with delight when I saw it and woke up Waffles who was sleeping nearby waiting for me to head home!!!!!!  AND it's two days after my birthday!!!! TWO DAYS AFTER MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I love when musicians I adore and the Universe conspire to bring me live shows right around my birthday time!!! It's a synchronicity that always feels like birthday gifts from the Divine whenever it happens!!!!!  

And I do adore Raye Zaragoza!! Setting aside all the mess made of things that should be straightforward simple and could have been easily solved by direct communication/acknowledgement rather than ghosting and gaslighting from the band, I do remain genuinely grateful for the Madison Delta Rae show at High Noon Saloon to close out the cycle in the same place I first saw the band play live all those years ago and give me a chance to clean out those hooks I could in the girls AND most of all for introducing me to the music and awesomeness of Raye Zaragoza!!!!!

And she's coming back to Madison as a gift from the Universe right around my birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAPPY SQUEEEES AND EAR TO EAR CHEESING GRINS!!!!!!!!!!!  I'm so happy and excited about that!!!!!!!!!

That was it. That was all. Just like, a lot of excitement and joy after reading that email!!!!!!! 

P.S. Not related to joy in gifts of music to my life, but I want to devour finish both my at home book AND my purse book I just started.... My at home book I started today is Hood by my friend AJ (pen name Amber Darwin) which is a gothic paranormal romance dark retelling of a fairytale with lots of sex scenes and while she's not the best writer I thoroughly enjoy what she writes and find them quick fun NSFW reads.  The purse book I just started today is Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch by Rivka Galchen which I brought with me to my sister's but didn't read on the plane and then never had a good span of time to just devour it because I could tell when I bought it it was one of those. It's a first person fictional retelling of the true witch trial of Katharina Kepler (mother of the astronomer/mathematician Johannes Kepler) and it gets into a lot of the sociopolitical avarice reasons behind the witch trials in the 17th century and how visceral real the tortures that followed even baseless false accusations of being a witch back in that era. I just started it this evening and I'm already 10% of the way through..... I'm very excited about both books, need to finish them both immediately and, honestly, I expect to have them both finished before the new moon late Saturday/early Sunday if not sooner (between them it's only like 500 or 600 pages total.) Because, to be entirely honest, other than getting my hours in at work and walking the dog and watering my 13 balcony plants and all my garden and planters at work and maybe Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, I'll probably be spending all my free time (and all the time I ought to be sleeping but when books hook me like this I don't sleep until my body insists on shutting down can't keep my eyes open no matter how good the book is, lol) reading until I've devoured both these books. Sorry not sorry. Not in the least sorry, lol. (Although, I do need to set aside time for watering my outdoor plants at work and putting the sprinkler out for the grass/trees because there's no rain in the forecast again for the foreseeable future AND highs are heading back into the mid-80s to low 90s, all the green babies will be needing so much water and everything not getting proper daily watering will be screaming by the end of the week... Also I hope we don't have the air quality take a dive from the Canadian wildfire smoke again -- it gives me low grade migraine and some serious light headedness and (pre)syncope issues when I stand up. This morning it was bad enough that between me and Mikaela both having migraines from it and it making Crissy's allergies horrible, we all opted not to go strawberry picking in the morning. Tomorrow, today now, air quality is finally back green and of course they're not picking because the fields all need to be watered. So we will likely postpone strawberry picking to next week because weekends there are crazy busy even if you get there at 7am when they open for it. Maybe not Monday though... Monday also already has dinner plans and probably going to a wine school event about some of the oldest wine cultivating regions of the world (mostly Balkans) at Leopold's Book Caffe & Bar.) 

P. P. S. 2:02am addendum: Left work right after that post and turned on the car to the opening bars of Stevie Nick's Edge of Seventeen!!!! So much shiny joy in me for that synchronicity timing! Love that song! And then after that came on the one hit wonder from like the 80s which I've heard occasionally on oldies radio stations but don't know well enough to know the verses of it, it's the one with the incredibly beautiful piano that I think is called Listen to Your Heart but without looking it up I have no idea who sings it or when it's from. (The lines of the chorus are "Listen to your heart when he's calling for you. Listen to your heart, there's nothing else you can do. I don't know where you're going and I don't know why, But listen to your heart before you tell him goodbye") Such a gorgeous old song, haven't thought of it in ages. The piano in it stopped me breathless because I forgot how beautiful those piano melodies are and then when it got to the chorus, the words cracked all my "this is what's best by him and right" overthinking hardness shattered it, shine the light on reminding me, "But this is nothing to do with what your heart WANTS, damnit! Why do you so stubbornly act in exact opposition to what your heart and soul know they want more than anything else?!?! Why do you fight so hard to try to say goodbye to him when nothing inside you wants that?!?!" I didn't have answers to those cracks through all the icy hardness of my logic and ethics conclusions pushing me toward actions that keep him from reaching me even at soul bond level if he doesn't want me enough to choose me in his life this life.... I still can't answer those questions. But I should have the courage to face them honestly and figure it out. Also, I don't know who sings it need to look it up after I finish this addition....but the song was beautiful and I listened to it all the way through sitting in my parking lot before heading into my underground garage to park. And now the piano parts and the chorus are echoing inside my inner self and I can't unhear them or get the earworm out of me. And I can't unask those questions i asked of myself. And for now, the song earmworming me in my silence is keeping those questions top of mind. Which. I think. Is a very good thing. Because they are questions I need to face and try to answer before I take even a single tiniest step away from him or trying to shut/quiet any path of communication/love echoing between our souls. I shouldn't let me attenuate any of the few remaining ways he has to reach me without being able to have honest answers to those questions.

[Post title: lyrics from the song Listen To Your Heart by Roxette. I cheated and used Ye Olde Google Search to figure out who sings it and to read the verses as well as the chorus repeating in my head. But the version I heard on the radio is not by Roxette, different colored timbre voice and real piano not sparkly synth. So now I need to figure out whose cover it was and find that.....]

 My favorite thing about Tootsie was the choreography and the dance skills of the ensemble who were remarkably good in this cast and it had some funny one liners. But I struggled, at a core ethics level, with doing a tour of the show right NOW in the current socio-political climate. It would always be in bad taste, even with the friend character calling out the trust issues of it... But, the musical debuted in 2019. And 2019 was well within the socio-political battleground of TERF and MAGA bigotry toward trans people being mainstreamed by the news taking seriously the argument that men were masquerading as women not out of genuine gender identity exploration but as a means to get ahead in a career or to take advantage of unsuspecting females.  And this musical, his REASON for disguising himself as a woman is because no one will hire him as a man (which gets into the misogynist/reverse racism trope that you are now disadvantaged if you're a white man) and then the central plot point is that he USES his false identity pretending to be a woman to get close to the other leading lady and then kisses her while masquerading as a woman without telling her who he really is even when she decides she likes and trusts the woman version of the character enough to try it as a lesbian relationship. And I guess my issue with the TIMING of this musical is that it is reinforcing the propaganda and stereotypes that are actively being used RIGHT NOW to justify some horrific legislation that actively harms so many people who are non gender conforming and trans and dress in drag for their own personal growth reasons of self exploration.... It was hard for me to enjoy the show because of how the musical was reinforcing the propaganda stereotypes against trans acceptance in society. It would be like if you took the song in Cabaret "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes" where he's dancing with an ape costume and the last line is "she wouldn't look Jewish at all" and the audience just agreed with all the premises of the song/costume and didn't even realize that the Nazis taken over the Cabaret in all the mirrors including you the audience member and you were actively helping to pass anti-Semitic laws/restrictions on where Jews could and couldn't be....and then like you actually had all the Jewish characters in ape costumes or obvious phenotype/prosthetics/costumes of the blood libel caricatures right from the start. And then made the ENTIRE musical about confirming the stereotype implicit in that premise. Only in this case it's the central plot points confirming the bigotry storyline that men who pretend to be women are only doing it to get ahead in their career and/or to be predatory toward women in situations/places of trust. 

I knew it involved a cross dressing lead and I was expecting it to be an integral part of the character or in some way having other LGBTQ+ characters surrounding the central characters (spoiler alert: everyone was straight except a throw away one liner from the agent character and the only brush with LGBTQ+ was when the lead actress was in love with the main character disguised as a woman offered to be lesbians with him even though she'd never felt like that about another woman before, which gets into some complicated issues around the assumption/propaganda that being LGBTQ is a choice rather than an identity) or at least something like Mrs. Doubtfire where it was to see his kids or something that's a breach of trust but still morally grey territory rather than overt propagandizing a political stance of the right wing authoritarian storyline they've been selling... It just gave me a lot of icks because of the current political climate that this musical did so well and is doing a Broadway tour around the country right now.... If the intention was to help educate that even those fears are groundless, then it's problematic because it reinforces those propaganda stereotypes rather than proving them wrong. 

It just... I understand that the reason to bring it in now was the thought "cross dressing broadway tour for Pride month -- check" and nobody looked beyond that to the subtext of it... But honestly, as an audience member too much of it felt like it was making the "male white men have it harder than anyone else" and the TERF/MAGA "all men dressing as women only do so to cheat when they can't succeed against men and/or to prey on women." Those messages and moral points were the core of the musical's plot points and it just felt like right wing brainwash under a veneer of song and dance to try to get into your subconscious that the story it's telling is a truth worth validating.... And that gave me the icks and I found myself regretting that we had spent the money to see the show and support it.

It felt like propaganda trying to reaffirm the stereotype and I can't find a way to say that wasn't any prt of what was going on with it. My parents didn't see it that way until I pointed it out and said, "It's just the TIMING of releasing this musical and now touring it in relation to the actual LAWS being passed against trans people and that the storyline reaffirms all the propaganda used to justify the laws of bigotry and cruelty. If this musical had been written or toured a decade ago, it would have been questionable in taste, but it wouldn't have been serving to reaffirm the narratives used to defend the laws that are actively hurting REAL people right now across the country... The timing and how it reaffirmed every argument used to justify the trans hate bills made it difficult for me to enjoy what was good and witty in the show."

I went into it wanting to enjoy it and to laugh and have a good time... But as I said, my favorite thing about it was the choreography and how good the dancers in the ensemble were. Because they were legitimately quite good and the choreography was superb.

(Also. Can somebody tell whoever the fucking NYC vocal coach is that keeps training Broadway and Broadway tour singers, "If you can't hit the note go nasal and it will be close enough nobody will notice" to just STOP and go back to the classic "drop that down a half step to the harmony if you can't hit it" because you ain't fooling anyone by going nasal to try to hit it....It's an NYC vocal coach and it's becoming more and more common in musical theatre and I fucking hate it because actually you just flattened the note further by the way the soundwaves propagate through the nasal cavity and now you sound like a fucking off key goose. There's a reason any good vocal coach and all operatic coaches will train you NOT to try to produce the note by propagating the sound through your nasal cavities, ffs. You support the note from your diaphragm and use your throat and mouth as a resonance chamber for amplifying the waves produced by the vibrations in the larynx and sending the dang note through your nasal passages flattens the tone and does not help you hit the dang high note by moving it further up your head voice. That's not how sound propagation works and you sound like a fucking vuvuzela and just stop! Just drop the note down to the harmony you CAN hit and move on with everyone's life without causing everyone present to wince at your honking....I have a lot of words for any vocal coach who tells you that you should move from head voice up into nasal to try to hit a high note out of your range... in case you hadn't noticed, lol.)

On LGBTQ+ related issues, I also recently finished reading Annie On My Mind. It's listed on a lot of best banned and challenged books lists and never having read it, I picked it up at some point last year and decided that during a Pride month so filled with hate, this was the time to read it. It was really really good! At it's heart it's just a very true simple love story and the obstacle to the love is society's view of such a relationship. It was written in 1982, before I was born, but part of what struck me about it was how modern it still felt. And how much the theme of "don't say gay" and the vitriol against even being publicly lgbtq+ in the education system has once more become a toxic thing.... I don't want to ruin the plot if you haven't read it, but it was a really beautiful love story and despite some of the unfairness and heartache around that, it's still uplifting full of hope despite the "good Christians" for whom the cruelty is the point who come seeking you out while you were minding your own business just trying to build a meaningful life full of love and joy built together. And, I've always admired my lesbian aunts who are professors and who have been together as long as I can remember, but the way that things were handled in the book helped me understand better why all through my childhood and college years, until after Oberfell made their marriage legal everywhere, they still had one as professor at Harvard and the other a professor at Wellesley, not even teaching at the same school just in case.... I never really thought about that when I was younger, but it provides a double security against the Puritanical bullies getting power over both your careers at the same time if they found out you were together..... And I guess it's the privilege of being cis-het female to have never even considered how problematic ANYONE innocently leading to you being outed was for your job even as recently as the 80s and 90s...and in too many places now in the present.... I'd never considered it as being a modern within living memory thing to think about until the Florida "don't say gay" laws that are now being passed elsewhere to penalize lgbtq+ teachers for even mentioning their home life or having a picture with their spouse or anything.... it hadn't struck me how brave and defiant it is to choose to be in education as an LGBTQ+ teacher despite the discrimination from the conservatism of some parents/faculty toward lgbtq+ faculty.

That theme isn't central to the main plot of the book, but it something the book made me think about. I recommend reading the book. It's meant for teens, it's a quick read. But if you haven't read it, you should. And by today's YA lit, there's really nothing sexually explicit in it at all other than if you consider it explicit to show that it truly is all the same sort of love in the heart questions it brings up about those who hold lgbtq+ to be a taboo form of love. And it's just a beautiful little love story no matter how you feel love within yourself... I highly recommend taking the time to read it quickly. Especially, again, given the current socio political regressions and discrimination.

The urge to set this private to avoid AI mining it is not as strong right now as it was last week. I'm sure it will come back eventually, but until it does I shall leave this window open and write as much or as little as I damn well please. But know that when I do set it to private next, there likely won't be much of a warning and that will be my reason why I did it. 

Honestly, right now my plan to do that is creating such resounding echo ripples of sorrow and loss in my inner quiet and i don't understand why.  

*sigh* It's not an if, it's a when. But. For right now. I don't feel strongly enough about the ethics of it being accessible to trawling for bots/AI (even though this is unlisted) for it to drive me to set this private right yet, just know that WHEN it does, I'm liable to do it with little or no warning. 

Anyway, I am home in my pyjamas because Waffles put herself to bed already in her crate. So it's now back to candles and piano music and tea and reading for me until I head to bed. Tomorrow night my parents and I have tickets to see the Broadway tour of Tootsie at Overture Hall. And Thursday early morning is strawberry picking at Carandale with Mikaela, Crissy, and maybe Sarah. Presuming they are open for you pick.

Where am I today? I wish that I knew. 'Cause looking around there's no sign of you. I don't remember one jump or one leap, Just quiet steps away from your lead. I'm holding my heart out but clutching it too, Feeling this short of a love that we once knew. Calling this a home when it's not even close, I'm playing the role with nerves left exposed. Standing on a darkened stage, Stumbling through the lines. Others have excuses, I have my reasons why.

FYI, I have decided to set this entire blog as private to authors. I already did, but then I felt I should explain my reasons why so I set it back to public until whenever I next set it back to private.

It's not anything anyone has done or an emotional reactionary thing, just something I've been thinking for a while now. 

This is primarily just my anecdotes or untangling my thoughts/feelings, it's not any sort of serious/real writing of mine and it's nothing that I would be upset getting back to the persons that have my emotions all in a turmoil I'm trying to figure out, because I do have a rule of transparent honesty ever since I realized in elementary school that lies undermine trust and without basic trust you have no foundations to build anything real. Although, the WAY I say things here is not the way I would choose to bring it up to the other persons if I decided it needed to be addressed and something good could come of the right conversation/communication in the right way about the matter. because 9/10 of healthy (and unhealthy) communication isn't WHAT you say but HOW you say it.  You can be completely right and speaking your truth from a place you feel empowered, but if you are self-aggrandizing boastful or confrontational or accusative or put the other person on the defensive, the chances of them HEARING what you're meaning to say is significantly decreased. And before you ever communicate anything directly TO somebody else, especially if it could be touchy or matters of the heart, you should evaluate WHY you are reaching out to them to give them that information and question yourself if HOW you are presenting it can help you achieve what you're hoping they can take away form the interaction as a part of everything they take with them. You can't control all of someone else's interpretations/reactions and you should never play fast and loose with honesty/truth speaking and white lie blurred lines in the communication, but it is always within your control HOW you present someone with a truth that you think they won't want to hear but need to hear. And often the ways that I dissect and evaluate and look at my own truths and my own emotions in this space are nothing like how I would present them to someone else once I'd digested them and was ready to share, generally in my case shared with the hope that it could lead to some sort of healing or rapprochement as my reason for bringing it up and for what inflects the HOW of the communications I choose. If that makes any sort of sense, like much that I put here it's a stream of consciousness explanation.

All of those words being to say it is not due to any change of heart or head about how I use this or what I say here or letting other PEOPLE read what is here.

So why am I setting this to private to authors? Well. Because of ChatGPT trawling. Given the ways ChatGPT is data mining across reddit and tumblr and other blog platforms, even an unlisted blog like this could feed the datasets and have my words and ways of creating them stolen. And I don't want that. My words are my own -- even stream of consciousness ones that I choose not to use them to pay my bills or in a useful way, still they are my words and my voice. I do not want them mined and stolen to destroy jobs for other creative people. So the reason i had set this to private again recently, and when I do it again so it disappears go private, that is why. Nothing else.  It will only be about removing my words/ideas from the body of internet that the current Wild West unregulated versions of AI trawls for style/knowledge/writing.

If you want access to my feelings/thoughts/words after I set this back to private to authors, just ask me. I won't knowingly tell a lie if asked directly. Fae rules. If you want to know something, just ask me -- and if I deflect or answer something else but not what you want to know, ask again (and if need be as many agains as it takes) until you get the answer I didn't think you were ready to hear but if you insist on hearing I will tell you no matter the hurt/harm the telling may do because the truth is better than the lie. because lying is the greatest cruelty you can do to another soul, cruelties that hurt more than once because once they learn the truth you've now added the pains of broken trust on top of whatever was originally hurtful in what you didn't want to truth speak. And I'd rather say the hard truths than be guilty of telling a direct lie that cuts deeper for being a lie. 

~*~*~*~*~

Also. In the last two weeks, I have managed to destroy 4 pairs of shoes while wearing them to a level that is completely unwearable WHILE they are on my feet walking about like normal, and then also this morning I had the left shoe on was testing the straps on the right shoe of the pair I meant to wear for Mikaela's high school graduation today and destroyed a fifth pair of shoes. Five pairs. In two weeks. Only one is possibly maybe salvageable.... Yesterday, the pair that i tested and put on started falling apart off my right foot while shopping at GAP Outlet (I desperately needed jeans and shorts, ALL of mine are full of holes but not in a "maybe this was intentional fashion distressed" sort of way or like in Kirkland the zipper broke on my well loved cut off short shorts that were once long shorts that were once jeans before I completely blew out the knees on them.)  Anyway, started with one strap on the right foot the strap tore out of the sole but by the time I was at the register, I was hobbling trying to keep it on dragging it with me and handed the high school guy the only pair of shoes they had in my size that I might ever wear again (actually very comfortable and cute on, though I would have bought them in black not the trench coat beige that existed in my size) and apologetically asked him, "Hi. Would it be alright to ring these in first thing and then cut the tags so I can put them on right now? All of it is going on my GAP card, but my shoes snapped while I was shopping and they're just falling more and more apart and are no longer even remotely useful." He looked at my shoe and just started laughing and was like, "HOW does that even happen?!" as he was ringing it in then looking for the scissors and I shrugged and laughed said, "I have no idea -- they were fine when I left home. but this is the fourth pair I've had destroy while on my feet this summer." He just stopped still in shock, "This summer?! We're only like two weeks into summer!" I just laughed harder and said, "I KNOW! I've had shoes fall apart on my feet before this, but I've never had FOUR pairs in under TWO weeks fall apart while I'm wearing them like this! Even for me this is getting ridiculous!" 

Some of them were like flip flops where the part between the toes pulls out which is just a thing that happens with flip flops because of structural weak point to stressors in the basic design of them. And some are shoes I've had for a long time and were well loved like the pair that I'd had since high school which completely disintegrated at the Chi Nickel Creek show (which I do NOT understand how I managed to stand and dance on them at The Salt Shed or walk back to the car or pick up my dog or get home based on the level of falling apart of those wedges when I got home...) 

Just a little broken there.... The funny thing is that my indication that my shoes might be on their last concert was that the OTHER shoe, the right shoe, the outer edge was falling inside the wedge sometimes when I walked....So I checked that first and wondered if it was maybe salvageable with some clamps and glue. And then I looked at that left shoe and was just like, "O holy fuck!! This one is definitely NOT salvageable! How in all the Hells did I dance and stomp through a Nickel Creek show, walk to the car, drive back to Madison and my parents house, walk inside to pick up the dog, drive home, and up two flights of stairs on a shoe in THAT condition?!?!"

I tend to buy things that are relatively timeless that I love or that are band/theatre/graphic tees that I love and will wear everything to death. I don't buy things for the fad and I do try to take care of things and repair them and keep on using them as long as possible. (I literally tear apart all my old shirts and skirts that gets holes in them or stains that make it so i can't even use them as house cleaning/pyjama shirts and I turn them into kitchen rags to get as much use as possible before they are thrown out...and in another life, another version of me would make rag rugs of the scraps once they couldn't even be dish rags.)  Most of what I donate are clothes I got as gifts or that have fit issues on me but might look great on someone else. So this isn't the first time I've had shoes destroy themselves while on my feet -- the most epic was at a Culver's somewhere in southern Illinois on my way to/from either St. Louis or Owensboro KY.  But the Friday (pictured), Saturday, and Sunday self-destructing shoes that destroyed themselves are pretty damn close to as bad the pair as I was walking from the car to the door of Culvers somewhere in southern half of Illinois, lol.

But yeah. FIVE pairs of shoes destroyed while on my feet in under two weeks, four of them while I was out and about with them on my feet.... Oy!

Bloody damn ridiculous even for me! 

I can't tell if it's the amount of energy/power coursing through me trying to ground itself. Or maybe it's like the Khalil Gibran quote, "Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." but it keeps leaving me barefoot and needing to buy new shoes if I don't have a spare pair with me as a "just in case the shoes on my feet decide to fall apart."

When I looked up spiritual/metaphysical/superstitions about shoes breaking (be it i real life or dreams) most cultures actually see it as a sign of good luck for the old outdated broken things falling away from your life and new good things coming into your life. It can also deal with protection. And in some belief systems, it can be about the breaking of outdated contracts, especially soul contracts, to free you to move forward without the old karmic ties weighing you down.

[Post Title: Lyrics to the Nickel Creek song Reasons Why. I love this song, and they played it at the Milwaukee show and it was so good!!!! Both the Chi and Milwaukee shows were so good!!!!! And they performed When You Come Back Down at both shows and I just lit up so joyous bright and clear with my delight and joy they were performing it because they hadn't in decades of shows!!!!! And I love it so much!!!! And Chris maintained direct eye contact with me throughout and said under his breath into the mic "you're so beautiful" while maintaining eye contact both times and ended with "I love you, thank you for still being here with us." He and I have a bit of a history from before he met his now wife, but it was never a serious thing just an occasional coffee or cocktail drinks and catching up and discussing literature/music/philosophy/politics/life advice. And he knows and has always known my ethics line is that I will never be involved in a third party situation or lies to hurt any other woman he's involved with and so even our friendship has waned because he's been happy with his wife and their son and that's as it should be. We've had past lives together and we crossed paths this life and there will be future lives that we cross paths. Still I love having those moments and memories and the sheer luminous beauty shining between us during that song, on both nights.  Because it was just so much fervent joy and love and the promise in the song of being able to let go and revel in watching someone you love soar and being ready to catch them if they ever fall.  You can't make old friends, and the same is true for the music and musicians who have been so much a part of your life since high school!! I was so happy to see all of them and the feeling was absolutely mutual!!! Was directly told so, lol. And I like that they took a long break and pursued separate projects to discover who they were as individuals not just a collective and then after long years (sometimes decades) they come back together to write songs and tour shows and renew their friendships with the versions of themselves they have become, as people and as individuals.]

 I learned tonight that George Winston died this weekend. I actually learned it on Twitter of all places, and because Eric tweeted about it while I was online checking in on the world in between watering all my indoor plants. (It FINALLY rained today! So I didn't have to water all my outdoor babies, so I used the day off pause from hauling water/sprinklers/hoses and tonight decided it was time to feed and water my indoor green babies at work.)  I would have seen it in my inbox later when I caught up on emails since I had an email of the public obituary from George Winston's fan mailing list. But still notable that Eric is how I first learned of it.... because I didn't expect it, it had slipped my conscious remembering that I still followed Eric on Twitter since it's the only social media I didn't unfollow him last summer over the lamprey's energy affecting his as he allowed her to twine around his life and it pushing me away from wanting anything to do with him because I don't like energy sucking souls. I knew that I never unfollowed him there, but he uses it so infrequently (or at least infrequent to the hours I check my feed there) that I forgot he had that means to reach me as well as his email list as his only current 3d real world ways to bridge the distances between us. Dream space bridging and reaching for me down the bond to let me know what his heart/soul is feeling is different.) But obviously, given my love of George Winston, that was not the sort of thing to make me unfollow or have anything but commiseration and acknowledgement of mutual sadness and gratitude for all the joy George Winston brought into this world with his gifts. And, given the news and how it would hit him hard, it does not surprise me to feel him reaching down the bond and flooding love and need and sorrow -- I opened it wide again tonight after I saw his tweet because I knew he'd need it. And my goal in minimizing contact isn't cruelty. It isn't to make him suffer alone, it's about ethics of right and wrong and consequences of choices made in free will. But of course I couldn't block him out from reaching me via the bond if that's what he needs for his own grieing when I KNOW he is sad and hurting and needs to feel what he loves that IS alive reaching him with the reassurance of aliveness in this moment.

 I knew it was coming soon, he'd mentioned over the winter when he played on zoom for my cat and dog so he could watch their joy in his playing and he commented on how Audrey was getting so skinny and I told him that Audrey was failing and I didn't think I could find a way that she'd make it past the winter and he told me quite seriously that he didn't think he'd out live her by 6 months. He didn't. She died Jan 21, he died June 4... I'm extra glad and grateful that I listened to my instinct and on Friday/Saturday while I was in a piano only mood and got some new video of Spock purring to his songs playing that I listened to my instincts and sent him an email I kept as short but heartfelt as possible with all the videos attached that I had taken over the years of how happy his music made my fur babies and sent him a short email of gratuitude for the gift of joy that his music has been throughout my life and for my fur babies, especially my cat Spock. He sent me a very short reply that just said "Thank you. This is everything to me. You don't know how much joy and peace these videos brought me."  For many years now, every time I shared about Spock and Audrey's joy in George Winston music, I tagged him so he had seen many of the videos, but I wanted to give him all of them again to remind him how much joy his songs gifted our lives.  I started doing it because one of the last times he came out after his shows to meet people, I told him that my cat and dog love piano music because of him and that he is specifically my cat's favorite musical artists ever, he lit up with the joy of a small child and he told me with tears in his eyes that cats are very discerning and to know he was a cat's favorite chosen music was the greatest compliment he had ever received. And it was after that that I started sharing the blissed out fur babies, especially my cat, reacting to his music so he could see and appreciate their joy in his piano compositions/playing. 

There are not many times you can return joy for joy, but I fully believe in seizing those opportunities whenever they present themselves to you. It's part of my philosophy of how I live this life. And, knowing how strange an introvert George was and that the only thing George Winston loved more than the piano was cats, I realized after our brief conversation after a concert that Spock in bliss over his music was the greatest joy I could give back to George Winston for the joy his songs have given me throughout my whole life. After that, he always remember me as "Spock's human" which always made me laugh.

I've known for a long time that his health is fading and that the cancer was winning, it made m much more focused on taking my annual opportunities to go to his concerts. (He used to live in Wisconsin and had many old friends in the area, so he made a point of coming through here at least once a year even years when he was so unwell he didn't tour anywhere except pop up dates in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Including this last Nov/Dec... I was very spoiled by that, but so incredibly grateful to know I'd get to sit in a room and hear George Winston play live on a grand piano at least once a year as a part of my post Samhain turning to winter solstice season traditions.)  I was one of the few people who got to see him in person this winter when he was here because one of my friends, her dad was George Winstons' best friend, and so she included me knowing how much I adore his music and always shared about his shows. When he saw me, he lit up said, "Ah, Spock's human!" which made Morgan laughed and she introduced me by my actual name as a friend of hers from dance classes. I mostly kept quiet and just enjoyed being there, masked and everything, because he was quite weak and sick. And that was when I learned he wouldn't be unable to travel further and that these Wisconsin shows were his last though he had never officially announced it. And it was at that time, when he asked about my animals and I told him tearfully that Audrey was unwell, probably a blood/bone cancer but it wasn't clear, but that my elderly Spock was doing well, that he offered that after he was at home and had recovered, we could do a short video concert of a couple songs for the animals and so he could tell Audrey (and Spock) his farewells in words as well as piano melodies even though he'd never met them in person. I told him only if he had the strength for it, but he did reach out for it and it made my animals so happy, Audrey licked the screen of his face in gratitude and Spock kept rubbing his cheek and purring right up against his hands playing on the screen.  It was one of Audrey's favorite last goodbyes of her last month and it was so sweet he insisted on doing that "because he understood better than I did how she was doing and wanted to give the animals one more shared joy while he could." 

It was incredibly kind of him, and I didn't ask because I'd never presume to ask for any such a thing but rather he offered. He was such a kind kind man.... Not just in his love of animals, most especially cats, but also he always gave where he could. He had said for the last decade or so of his shows that he had enough money for his needs and so at all his shows, he partnered with a local foodbank/charity and asked for nonperishable food/diaper donations and then gave all the sales of all his music and posters at any given show to be split between the charities. And every show he sold out because after intermission he would tell people that this was what he did and how much had already been made for the charities and then after the show the last of his CDs and posters sold out. So he always had an order made for each show to arrive at the venue for him over the last three or five years..... Just such a kind giving soul, at least in the years since I knew his time was limited and I needed to go to every opportunity and cherish every show and every song and every smile and every moment and every story that my short encounters gifted my life. And the time in which there last 6 years or so that I gave back to him the only way I knew how, to find joy in his music and to share that joy with my dog and my cat and to share with him the footage of their bliss form his music, especially Spock's. 

I'm sad he's gone, butthe music and the memories of his gentle kindness and goodness will continue to shine on every life he has touched and made brighter. And,I'm glad he's no longer suffering because these recent years he was so tired and it was physically so hard for him and he still wanted to give but he was running out of the energy to do so and he knew it. It was hard to see him this last winter. Just as December and January were so hard with my Audrey Pupburn as her life force was winding down.... It's funny how many of her favorite things will never be again now she's gone -- not just no more Aaron Rodgers/Lazard touchdowns or Mason Crosby field goals for a Pack party treat time for her (we danced and cheered and celebrated every touchdown and she got a treat, every Packers touchdown and half a treat for every packers field goal) but now there will be no more George Winston songs she never heard and I will never see his live shows in person again after the ones this last winter. 

And he was right when he told her he wouldn't outlive her by even six months....  Even then he knew, even if he was keeping it private to friends and family -- and animal friends who loved the magic of his hands on the piano keys. 

~*~*~*~

I will likely set this post to private later, now that I've written out my thoughts and anecdotes. these are personal memories and not for n'importe qui.Still, these things happened and his songs are such gifts of beauty and his gentle kindness was even more beautiful than his piano pieces, hard as that is to imagine if you've ever heard his compositions or seen him play a grand piano. And while I've known it was coming, still my love and joy that he EXISTED at all is tempered by my sadness that his body's time gave out even if he had been honest that the time was coming and he remained gentle and kind and giving and trying to pour into the world share the beauty in motion of the music in his head/heart/fingers for as long as he could.

And now tonight, I shall continue to listen to George Winston music as I have since I heard the news (other than radio randomization in the car and Billy Joel playing for Waffles when she's left alone until it's a song or break between songs  I'm okay to turn off/pause, I've actually only been choosing to listen to George Winston since last Thursday) and light a candle in his memory and I will hug my sweet fur babies closer and cry on Spock's side while I let him know that my cat's greatest admirer and the greatest musical love of my cat's life has passed on into spirit though his recordings of his songs remain with us. And if you ever want to give my cat the greatest possible joy and gift, sit down at the piano and start playing a George Winston song for him. he will run over chirping with joy and sit next to you on the piano bench and purr and purr and purr and nudge your hand/wrist with the top of his head when you stop to encourage you to play some more piano, especially if it's a George Winston piece or a piece inspired by George Winston.

P. S.  I told Spock first thing walking in the door (before even setting down my purse or taking the harness if the dog) that George Winston had died and like Audrey his body was no more though his soul like hers lived on. His immediate reaction was to shake his head side to side like saying "No no no no" and to start yowling at the top of his lungs. After getting the dog out of her harness, to stop the yowling grief of my cat, I picked him up and cuddled the poor boy like a baby and kissed his head said, "His songs live on with us and as soon as I set you down from this snuggle I will put his songs on for us and I will leave them on until you're ready to take a break, ok my love? He would love having the blessing of his life be remembered that way." Spock is still sad over the expected inevitable, but happy to have George Winston's music playing and curl up with meso he isn't alone with his grief. 

 One of my favorite song lyrics is from the song Me and Bobby McGee (which I always think of as a Janis Joplin song even though she didn't write it) and it's the line, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Nothing don't mean nothing, honey, if it ain't free." I think that it's in part because I personally place so much emphasis on the sanctity of free will. And yeah we could debate if free will even exists given all the predetermined laws of physics and the pre-conditioned  programming of family/culture/evolutionary biology and the randomness of things we encounter that can change our course. But even if we see all of those factors as inflexible rather than malleable influences, still in the crucible of the moment we always have a choice for what we're going to do with what we have at our disposal and our sets of visible options and our knowledge at that time. No amount of predetermination can explain a Joan of Arc given the world and social strata she was born into, her choices took her well outside the predetermined scripts her life (and the histories of France and England) was headed for without the free will choices that shifted the fates of nations. And so for me, I tend to see actions only acquire meaning when they are taken in free will rather than coercion of will. 

~*~*~*~

I started that first part on Saturday morning after taking a nap before predawn and then after I was dressed ready to go, Crissy and I ended up deciding not to go to Farmer's Market because it would be crowded due to Cows on the Concourse and while we wanted the market, we did not want all those humans. So I took the dog on a quick walk then went back to sleep and after i woke up that afternoon, I got busy taking care of my plants and forgot about it and NOW I have no idea where I intended to go with my thoughts/feelings/opinions on free will and why I woke up from my short nap Saturday morning with that song and that lyric repeating in my head like an explanation or a warning after the vision dream that I'd had right before waking... The best i can remember is that somehow it was linked inside me when I woke up with why my attempts to break/limit contacts with Eric even in dream vision space cause hurt and harm even when that is not my intention and so does my pursuit of non-attachment in the name of setting him free to choose what he wants for his happiness and life path without being constrained by old promises to me. but I don't REMEMBER where I was going or why it meant so much to me or even much of the vision dream that I awoke from that he was in but as himself not in his spirit polar bear form but as he is in this life and he wasn't well and there was a warning in it that somehow in keeping his soul from reaching me I was making him sick and starving his soul's energy reserves even if my ethical reasons seemed sound and I woke up on Saturday before the sunrise and it was vital to me that I REMEMBER what he said to me when he finally found me in dream space about how his soul was starving this month with the ban I had placed on anything with the lamprey's energy wound through it reaching me and I remember now that after he finally found me and I saw how reduced his spirit energy is that it deeply broke my heart and that I made him a promise but I can't for the life of me remember now what I promised or how it was he'd finally found a way to reach me in vision dream space stripped down to who he IS now qua himself this life rather than his spirit world soul form which I do remember him saying he was too tired and weak at a soul level to embody right now.... 

I just can't remember it all now. But it was important and it shifted something and I don't remember now what only that something DID shift and whatever I promised I'll stand by it. Only I don't remember now, all I remember is that somehow it is anchored into the ancient old promise he and I made each other so many many millennia of lifetimes ago. I'll keep the promise, especially once I remember it, only I don't right now, and so if you're expecting me to DO something active now after that dream and the promise I made, I don't remember now what I'm supposed to do. And I don't think that's a problem, but if it is, please, try to help me remember if you can. Because it was important. It FELT vitally important when I woke up to it. And when the song lyric was echoing on repeat all Saturday inside me as reminder and warning of not to take the idea of gifting freedom so far that it becomes destructive....

It's all tangled now. And Saturday morning before I lost the thread and let life snarl things up it was all so clear inside me. And I'm sorry. I can't ALWAYS exist in that state of flow and clarity of my higher self, sometimes I have to ground myself back into the mortality of it all, being in the incarnations cycle of souls... In fact this whole life, my north node is in Taurus and my soul's PURPOSE of the lessons to work on this life is actually about seeking the simple pleasures of LIVING true to my own path in alignment with the natural world and the stability and stubbornness of choosing to LIVE fully within the physical realm while you're in it and I am doing the most to achieve my life purpose this life when I guide my choices by how to live a life seated in the wholesome life giving beauty of the planet and being fully in a life of everyday wonder and pleasure and focusing on the everyday not just the esoteric. The meaning of the koan: "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." of Zen Buddhism, about balancing the spiritual with the mundane and finding they are the same and the beauty is in the trueness of that recognition.

Honestly, most of my life right now is rounds of walks with Waffles, watering plants, cooking, reading with tea and snuggles with Spock/Waffles, running occasional errands, going to work to get some friend time/socializing for Waffles, water outdoor plants, working for a bit, home to tea and snuggles, sleep, then wake up and repeat. The repetitiveness of needing to water so much as a primary immutable have to in my life right now due to the rain drought has me feeling since I got back to WI like I'm on an endless loop of quotidian care taking of my body, my fur baby familiars, and all my flower/herb green babies. it's serene and tranquil and healing, but time blindness of being in flow is making it hard to keep the days straight as they all blend together in repetitions of sameness these last several weeks. Everything has a very surreal quality to the repeating daily cycle schedule.

And anyway. I'm so sorry I don't remember now like I did when I started this post... The urgency has faded, but only because of whatever I promised and I can't REMEMBER what I promised because the vision dream has faded in the quotidian tasks of keeping life in this body and caring for my flowering green babies through this drought time of when/where I am living these everyday moments.... But whatever I promised, it does stop the urgency that was in the dream before I promised, the starving wasting sickness that is eating him from the inside since the 5th or 6th, whenever the eclipse was, because the starving sickness in him was a direct consequence of my choice of how I was limiting his soul from reaching my soul....

But it's all faded now except the sense of urgency and knowing there was a  promise I made in the dream that stilled the urgency provides a path through to healing but now I can't remember where I was going with that first bit or even what it was I promised or how it helps give him a means of healing and no longer starving/dying of thirst/sickening from his soul in a fever state burning outward....

I don't know if that helps or is enough, just to know that the urgency reached me in dreams and I did promise something and in me the shift of it involved the premises of that lyric as a warning -- but now the details of all of it's all faded back into the subconscious soup of the human experience but the shift/change is still there.

~*~*~*~*~

Also. Today I went to the plant store for a few more flowers that I forgot to pick up and some tarragon and a pepper plant to replace the one a chipmunk severed right at the base and killed and a regular basil plant. (I found one called "Sweet Dani" Basil!!! And it was to go into the planter that already had my Aristotle basil!! And that made my philosopher's heart so happy! And also, my last name, it's French for smooth/shiny but in high school I learned from a friend that it also curiously enough means sweet in Tolkien's elvish (Quenya) so I joke that I'm one of the few people you will ever meet with a French and Elvish last name. so a type of basil called "Sweet Dani" is one that quite literally had my name written all over it, lol.)

But I didn't come here to digress about basil or the etymology of my name(s) or how happy it makes my inner philosopher to have a Sweet Dani basil right along side in the same planter with an Aristotle basil.

I came to say that today at the Fitchburg Farms greenhouse, I was in the house plant section and there was a small topiary tree that called to me and it was a myrtle tree. And I found one that resonated with me took around the store with me to shop more but when we went back to return a house plant that Crissy chose differently about, the original one still called to me and while I didn't NEED 1 myrtle tree let alone two, they both got so dang sad when I tried to explain to them that I didn't NEED two baby myrtle trees at $24 each that i just couldn't break their hearts so they both came home with me as well as two large impatiens that look like roses for my patio and I will go buy pots for the myrtle trees tomorrow.

Their flowers look like little stars though!!! And they both sang to me so loudly!!! And their flowers look like stars and smell like heaven! And they were so sad about not coming home with ME, I even had Crissy try talking to them for me because while she can see the way plants visibly perk up when I touch them or choose them, she can't hear them as I do but these two trees she HEARD when she tried to tell them that I didn't need one and certainly not both and she was like, "Oh my goodness, Dani, they're talking suicide sad if you reject them now that you claimed them." And I just nodded and said, "I know. That's what they've told me every time I've tried to persuade myself not to bring them home with me...That they're a whim because I don't NEED myrtle trees in my home." So yeah. i caved to the peer pressure of the two myrtle trees with their white flowers like stars.

And then I looked up the symbolism and associations of the myrtle tree just now tonight, to see why they called to me so and reminded me of my promise and how they are to hold that contract for me. And it filled my heart with awe and beauty and wonder when I looked them up and what they stand for to bring a myrtle tree into your home. And an overwhelming sense of rightness. And gratitude.

And tomorrow evening, I shall go find the right vessels to plant my two little myrtle trees bursting full of promised flowers (one already with flowers opened on it, the first one that called to me) so I can bring them home.

I don't REMEMBER my promise because of how the dream faded, but I do know that somehow the myrtle trees serve and their white star like flowers insisted on coming into my life as a physical seal upon my promise and to remind me every time I look at them and care for them that there IS an important promise I made/renewed, And It's all tied round and through ancient Greek mythos about Aphrodite ( to who the myrtle is the sacred tree) and a promise of love and good luck and harmony and prosperity and innocence and fertility and soul love that binds beyond deaths and rebirths. It's all tangled up together and the rightness is there in my soul and my intuition and my subconscious even if it all feels a damn tangle to my conscious mind that can't remember the dream with clarity/precision anymore.  

And the buying of the myrtle trees today to seal a physical reminder for me as I care for them about the promise I made/renewed/reaffirmed.... That's part of the sense of RIGHTNESS for all it makes no damn sense.... And somehow the warning in the lyric is a part of that tangled mess that I understood so CLEARLY yesterday morning after the vision dream, the warning in it for me to always remember that "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

Hell if I understand it in a logical way, for all my gifts and intuition and soul still seem clear about it all. I'm going to head home to change int my PJs and make me some tea with chamomile to help me sleep and burn my hexagonal beeswax pillar candle some more and open my window/balcony door to listen to the frogs in the pond at the end of the circle (despite the ozone warning and Quebec smoke air quality warnings) until I'm ready to head to bed. (At least that's what I will do after the cars parked on the street right outside the building with their lights on ever leave...) Or if I'm tired enough when I get home, I'll just PJs and get ready for bed and then sleep to dream and save the hygge for another night. And if any of the rest of that tangle of vision dreams and promises and free will and myrtle trees makes sense to you, do what you can to bring me back to the place I remember and it's clear to all the different aspects and facets of me qua me. Please?

 I tried to go to sleep early tonight. I tried to do the responsible reasonable thing knowing that I made plans to meet for Farmer's Market at 6:15.... Market starts at 6:15, but we tried meeting a little later this year at 6:45 and by 7:30 it's so crowded it's significantly less enjoyable.... We've had past years when we've met at 5:45 to be there when the market opens at 6:15, but I'm hoping we don't have to do that this year.... But when the entire square is packed with humans hardly moving by 8, you do what you have to do. 

I did TRY to sleep, and both animals tried to help me sleep -- Waffles has asked to be put to bed in her kennel for the second time now. 

Only, I never do sleep well in the hours the moon is above the horizon when it's too near the full moon. Even without looking at calendars or the night skies, I always know the phase of the moon when it's above the horizon by the way the energy of it ebbs or floods. It's not even the light in the darkness does it, it's just like, this shimmering bright sparkly white aliveness of raw energy coursing through me that makes sleep hard and rare for me right around a full moon. I don't know how else to describe it, it's just like this ringing singing pure note and raw slam of electricity and it's got this incredibly intensely blue whiteness brighter than white to the energy. And it happens around every full moon (you'd think by now I would be used to it) and the shimmer and glow of it courses through me for all the hours the moon is above the horizon wherever I am..... It's not even related to my monthly cycle, for me that shifts based on which sign the moon is in not which phase the moon is in as to when I'm ovulating vs menstruating, so my body's cycles have nothing to do with the truth that full moons keep me awake. It's just something in the energy of a full moon lights me up incandescent and the resonance that can't be stilled in me sings the color of the bright end of the piano above middle C, but I suppose that makes sense as the colors of a grand piano to my synesthesia are the colors of a full moon across the waves of a large body of water -- below middle c are the colors in the troughs of those deep blues and the colors above middle C are where the moon lights the peaks of the waves so they seem like the water itself holds the light in it.... So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the energy that sings through me during a full moon sings like the upper end of a piano. After all, my color-timbre synesthesia is just how my brain cross linked the micro oscillations in sound waves to what it knows of light and spirit waves that resonate the same way. Not all synesthesia cross linking is so obvious, but I've spent a lot of time over the last decade or so since I realized most people don't experience the color-light-textures I do with music trying to figure out what in the name of auditory science my brain is doing for the cross linking. 

But it means that setting the words themselves aside and how you can indelibly imprint messages in my memory forever by setting them to music, the orchestration and composition itself paints for me in color-light-texture patterns as long as you're using real instruments. And a grand piano is always and always and always painting for me the full moon upon the waves of seas/oceans/deep clear lakes. A keyboard or digital piano is more like a desaturated, almost black and white version of it, but a grand piano, especially in person, is the richness of standing on the shore or on a boat watching the moonlight dance on the waves. And an acoustic/classical guitar is like painting the way the dapples of sunlit leaves dance in the breeze, metal strings are different shades of greens depending on the core and what sound woods are used for resonating while nylon strings are more golden like aspen/birch leaves in the fall when the sun is behind them. But those are the color-light-textures you paint with for me depending on which you choose, the piano is moonlight on water and an acoustic/classical guitar is the sun backlighting tree leaves. It's also what I hear if I turn back on the secondary form of my synesthesia, where I can hear the music of something I look at -- when I watch the lapping of water beneath the full moon I hear piano playing the melody of the moving water and when I watch tree leaves dancing in a breeze with the sun behind them I can hear their movements as a guitar melody.... I don't often turn that secondary form of synesthesia back on, most things in the man made world are discordant cacophony messes. But sometimes I turn it back on, most often when I'm in nature or somewhere with complementary color/pattern movements or sometimes while staring at one particular piece of art that intrigues me how it sings or when I gaze upon a really beautiful soul's aura that is in inner harmony and tranquility with its own nature resonating and singing its own colors into the space around it. I can't turn the colors off for timbres of a resonating note, but I can control if i let me hear the music of colors/energies to protect me from the overwhelming chaos of hearing the music of everything in my field of vision living in the modern human world. 

And the moons energy is the color and resonance of the upper half of a piano which is the color of moonlight on the peaks of waves on open water where it makes the liquid light. Which, now that I think of it, is probably why whenever the moon is gibbous bright enough to make sleep difficult when she's above the horizon, I always find myself drawn to listening to even more piano music than my usual. My desire for piano music starts to crescendo in me about 6 days before a full moon until the point I really ONLY want to listen to piano music for about 3 days before and after the full moon and then it decrescendos to my normal level of desires for piano music.  I hadn't really thought about it before, but the timing does always align for my "only music with prominent piano parts" fixation while the moon is over three quarters gibbous....

So anyway. I tried to be responsible and get some sleep given my early morning plans for Farmer's Market ... But the bright silvery-blueness raw power singing through me from the full moon being above the horizon kept me awake. 

It's not just the energy of the moon can keep me awake, lots of other energies sing colors and resonate music too that fill me to bursting with raw power... I flow raw chi/prana through my cells the way most people breathe. Full moon above the horizon is just a particularly dependably timed charge, like plugging an ac adapter into an outlet on a schedule. The flow of energy coursing through me and the sorts of spiritual energy work I can do with my gifts is higher during a full moon, as is the accidental damage if I lose control of my temper get irritated -- i fry way more lightbulbs during full moons than any other time of the moon's cycles. 

Anyway. I did try to go to bed at a reasonable time, especially as I didn't sleep much the night before. The moon just sang too bright a flow of raw power through me for my body to rest into sleeping. I probably shan't sleep until after moonset, whenever that is here. 

So eventually after a couple of hours laying in the dark with a sleep mask on tingling like a live wire and sparking static electricity arcs every time I moved between the sheets or tried to pet the cat, I gave up and made me a cuppa tea and have decided to read instead. And when Waffles got so tired she wanted to put herself to bed, but can't secure the kennel door which is her safe space, I told her she could go to bed without me and gave her a treat and latched the door after kissing the top of her forehead goodnight.  Spock is wide awake guarding the front door to make sure I can't leave and nothing uninvited can get in if I refuse to sleep.  

And of course, I'm pretty sure moonset is somewhere around 4:30am when I had intended to be up at 5am to make breakfast because Lord knows I can never sleep from first light until sunrise is finished anyway.... O well, I can sleep after I'm done at Farmers Market and errands and just make sure I get up again to go start the many hours of sprinkler moving to water my plants at work around 4:30/5pm. 

I wonder sometimes if I weren't so sensitive to the energy of the gibbous moon between moonrise and moonset for like a week and a half every month AND if i could sleep across the gloaming of sunrise/sunset if maybe I could have a more regular Circadian rhythm..... Then again, i don't know how to achieve that short of like living on a space station with a set place of orbit relative to the moon's orbital path?.... And that ain't gonna happen. I think that for at least this lifetime I just live with the sleep deprivation and catching up on sleep issues my energetic flow sensitivities cause. And try to make plans during the gibbous moon that coincides with the hours between moonrise and moonset and ignore what normal human time is doing for those weeks.... At least that's been my answer so far. Lord help me if ever I have kids who run on mortal time not spirit energy flow time..... I'd best have a husband who can live his days by the clock's metronome rather than in the tides of moonrise/moonset as it moves around the hours of the gloaming.....  

But you should hear the melodies that the gibbous moon pours through the energy flow resonances in the times of the month she sings bright enough to drown out even the the dancing shimmery spangle songs of the stars! All energy sings in wavelengths of timbre-color-light texture to my synesthesia and my soul's perception, and the songs of the energy light givers are as beautiful as the paintings of symphonies! It always has, but in this body, the cross linked synesthesia makes it all sing so bright as it dances between the light and shadow oscillations of the travelling wave forms! Everything with energy/light/soul in it both shimmers and sings a color-timbre-light for me in the way it propagates movement through space-time. And it is the most beautiful thing that most people never experience. (And tbh, since learning most people don't have synesthesia and how the neurology of it works, I've been rather irrationally afraid to even consider taking any type of psychedelics/hallucinogenics in case it unties the crosslinking in my synapses so I lose the beauty of my synesthesia and my color-timbre perceptions of wave form energies.)