Work in Progress

At times like this, when I’m not sure exactly what I want or where I’m headed, I find it’s best for me not to force it.  To wait it out, and, while I’m waiting, to go back to the basics.  Try to sort out “who I am,” or, in other words, what my most basic values are now.  This is one of the many reasons "the List" has been so important in my life.  In addition to being a tangible reminder of the things that are important to me, it is, when all else fails, a damn good distraction.  At any given time, I can put myself to work chipping away at one (or more) of the items.  And, if I’m paying attention, each attempt, big or small, successful or unsuccessful, teaches me something new.  It’s kind of like finding a puzzle piece that fits somewhere on the picture you’re trying to make.  It’s not always the piece you were looking for, but every bit helps.

  

The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I put my list on the sidebar of this blog a few weeks ago.  I felt a little weird about it, because some of those items are a bit personal, but I figure you can’t expect to get what you want in life if you won’t even admit what that is. So there it is.  And hey, if you think you can help, let me know.   Anyway, right now I’m working on items 16, 55, and 74.

Number 55 isn’t easy, but it’s simple.  It doesn’t require much more of me than dedication and tolerance to pain.  Like most of life.  There’s only one way to accomplish it, and that is to go straight into it.  At least once every other day, I try to do as many push-ups as I can, and I try to do more than I did last time.  My progress? The number I can do with my knees on the ground has been going up relatively quickly, so I think any day now I’ll be able to do more than ½ of a “real” push-up.  Any day now.  And from there, 10 can’t be so far off.

Item 74 has been trickier than I thought it would be.  But only because I let it be.  I can bake, but I want to learn to cook. Specifically, I want to be able to cook at least 10 dishes well. I’ve already got enchiladas, and I more or less know my way around a lasagna, but with 8 dishes to go, I need some items in my repertoire that aren’t casseroles.  That said, I’ve concluded that I’m not much for complicated recipes and exotic ingredients.  I went through a phase where I wanted to make really impressive food, and it generally led to culinary disasters.  I thought I must be hopeless, so I decided to take advantage of the close proximity to my mother, grandmother and sister by getting recipes from them and then following them to the letter.  Well, guess what I’ve learned? It’s not about the recipes, exactly: they all make exceedingly delicious meals by, for the most part, keeping it simple.  They don’t need 30 types of seasoning when one or two will do just fine.  They don’t have to hunt for ingredients at special supermarkets.  I’m going to follow their lead, and see what happens.  Sometimes you’ve got to get out of your own way and stop complicating everything with grandiose plans.  That’s true of food, and it’s true of just about everything else.

Finally, my favorite: number 16.  I started playing the piano when I was 6 or 7 years old, when my parents bought me a Casio keyboard, which I’m pretty sure they could barely afford, and enrolled me in lessons at my school.  I spent long, agonizing, enchanted evenings poking at the keys in an effort to make “Kumbaya” come out.  And eventually, I did.  It felt like a miracle.  By the time I was about 12, I was agonizing over Bach and Beethoven.  But I decided that playing piano wasn’t as cool as hanging out with my friends.  So I quit.  I didn’t regret it right away, but for about 10 years now, I’ve wanted to find my way back.  The problem is that whenever I start again, I get discouraged.  I’m rusty now, my fingers aren’t as nimble as they used to be, and even reading music requires a lot more thought than I feel like it ought to.  And when I stumble over a simple song, I lose heart. 

At the time I quit, I had just begun learning Beethoven’s Fur Elise.  Now I want to finish.  Of course, what I really want is to start.  Start playing again, playing everything under the sun, not just that song.  But first I want to make it back to where I left off: Fur Elise.  I could’ve learned it relatively quickly fifteen years ago.  But now I’m going to have to work my way up to it.  I can play the first two sections.  I still haven’t managed to make my fingers move quickly enough for the third.  But when I sit down at my mom’s piano, I feel my world shrinking down to the notes, to my fingers, to the way the music feels, and I remember this piece of myself, a piece I let go when I first started to care what it meant to be “cool.”  A piece I’ve approached dozens of times since then, but walked away from each time because I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to do it anymore.  I’ve been playing every day here.  And it’s such a small thing, but it makes me deep-down happy.  One more little thing that makes me happy to add to my life, to the other little things.  One more puzzle piece in place.  When I get back to Poland, I’m going to find a practice space and keep working on it.