Absolutely! {perhaps}

Not My Favorite Kind of Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 16:24:00 +0000

I've decided: the worst is the morning they leave. It doesn't really matter who or where they're going or even for how long. If it's someone you love and they are leaving while you stay behind...

Here is the problem with farewell mornings: you aren't fully anywhere. Or anywhen. You aren't leaving, so there's not much to prepare. You can't jump back to your to-do list because you really don't want to miss any time with the someone-you-love. And yet, it's hard to really be together because by this point both your minds are already thinking about what comes next and what mustn't be forgotten and how much you're going to miss each other.

It doesn't matter how good the visit was. In fact, I believe this effect is directly linked to how wonderful your time was - the better the time more wistful the morning.

Because that of course is the real problem with farewell mornings. Over everything is this color of memory of all the other times you've said goodbye and the empty feeling right after they leave. You know that feeling and you know it's coming again...

The Wall: a snapshot

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 03:05:00 +0000

Our walls each look different and I know they change with time. This is what mine tends to look like these days:

It's night and I'm tired. Asleep-in-a-moment tired. There's a nagging list in my head of things I should have done during the day and didn't. And now instead of going to sleep I'm sitting in front of my computer and refreshing Netflix and Hulu again and again in search of something to watch.

This is despite the fact that I know I don't particularly want to watch anything. I'm just doing it because the wall around making music is pushing me away and making me think about anything else. And the easiest way to not think about everything I haven't done or the things I want to do is to watch someone else doing funny things in a little glowing box. Or have adventures. If I'm not having adventures, at least someone is.

Yes, it's a bit odd, when you really think about it. Glowing glass box... But it works. Let me tell you, it works far too well.

Songwriting Lessons: Preface/Prelude

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:13:00 +0000

There are always songs waiting to be written.

Most of the time they are hiding behind what I've been referring to as a wall. Really, it seems to be more like a Doctor Who-esque perception filter: a force that makes you want to look anywhere but there and to not-quite-see whatever it's hiding. This is the force that makes me want to do anything but go over and say hello to those songs, including but not limited to watching online television, mindlessly staring at facebook, plucking my eyebrows, cleaning the pink mold off my shower head, or reading a random novel from the library. And all the while I don't even notice that I'm avoiding the one thing I want so very badly to do.

I've been running into this wall for as long as I've been trying to write songs.

This week I noticed the wall and named it. Dear interwebs: please meet Judgy-wudgy-pants. Or Horace. Really I haven't decided yet. BUT - I've started to notice when it starts pushing me to look elsewhere.

What will follow is the ongoing story of how I learned to see Horace, what I find beyond his perception-filter force, and the process of meeting my songs.

And hopefully it's a story that's not only quirky and interesting, but also maybe a tiny bit helpful to one or two other people.

Because I'd lay good money on the idea that there's a Horace somewhere in pretty much everybody's life.

Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 06:32:00 +0000

I haven't blogged for a year because I didn't feel I had much to say.

I now feel I may have much to say.

Beware.

Reparations!

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:50:00 +0000

"Hi... um, I am bringing over a guitar for reparation and I was wondering if there are a lot of customers in the store and how long it would take?"

"Well, that depends on what needs done. Can you tell me what is wrong with the guitar?"

"It needs reparation! Are there many customers there? How long will it take?"

ummm...

Spruce Knob

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 04:26:00 +0000

It's too late for anything particularly profound, but I was just looking through my pictures from this weekend and I really loved this image. It's ok small, but you should really click through and see it full size. I do love cameras and how they help you see things just a little bit differently.

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Last night I found a two year old sticky note from my mom in which she told me she's glad I am a "strong, focused woman." It was apparently significant enough - for a sticky note - to make it into my journal (an honor not many stickies achieve!). I'm still pondering it, so it's apparently a sticky with longevity, too.

Recently I was told by a young man wanting to ask me on a date that I was "sweet and helpful". He was trying to be complimentary, and I'm sure he really liked that I seemed sweet. And helpful. But it made me sad.

I don't want to be sweet and helpful. I want to be smart and deep and honest and true and effective and strong and wiry and kickass. I want to be someone to be reckoned with, someone to be counted on, someone to love and be loved by deeply and wildly. I want to be joyous and ridiculous. I want to be wise and tempered, and I want to be bold and full of adventure and courage.

I want to be met as an equal, not looked down on from above. I want to challenge and push you to be more extraordinary, and I want to be pushed myself. I never want you to lose a game we're playing to make me feel good about myself.

Once when I asked one of my best friend what drew him to his new girlfriend he thought for a long moment and told me very earnestly "she's genuinely kind". This surprised me and made me think. Yes - there is enormous value in true, deep kindness. It's difficult and it takes strength. I want to want to be kind.

But for now I'd so much rather be all those other things.

Waves

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 01:34:00 +0000

Back and forth and back and forth. I go in and out like a wave. Will I won't I will I won't I... What if what if not what if what if not what... Ins and outs are exhausting.

But what if my ins and outs somehow make as interesting patterns as the waves?

Images: a reprise

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:09:00 +0000

Is it strange that I tend to pick my images first and then write about what they inspire? I used to write first and illustrate with photos, but those days are gone. I see and live discrete moments, and it is harder now to put them into words. Photos work better.

There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb...

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:08:00 +0000

I'm going somewhere. Even if it's into a painted wall on the side of the music store in my hometown. Static, stationary, sedentary, stagnated, stuck. These are all words I will not accept. And why do they all begin with "s" anyhow?

Country Strikes Again

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:02:00 +0000

You know I scorn country music. The twang, the boring bass lines, the 3 chord songs... *cringe* Yet tonight I couldn't stop palying a Hank Williams song. I'm infatuated.

One of the teachers at my store is in this local play about Hank Williams. Now, before tonight I couldn't have told you anything about Hank except I don't think he's alive anymore and I don't like his music. But those songs... they're simple, but they work! And the actor who played Hank had this incredibly interesting voice.

I came home and immediately began to pick out the chords to "So Lonesome I Can Cry". I was intending to minimize the country and maximize me anyhow, and then I came to the B7 chord. I can't play a B7 chord. I can't even play a simple B. So I didn't. I played something else. And it definitely minimized the country. It also worked.

What's the moral of this post? The thesis - as one might say if one was feeling particularly inclined to the scholarly in this moment - ? Not sure. I'm going to take a stab in my own muddled dark and say: 1.) Country music has some gems that even I can't ignore and 2.) It's ok to be inadequate. Sometimes it even makes things more interesting.

Green and Growing Things

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

I was complaining to my sister today about spring's strange way of greeting Charlottesville - one day you look up and crocuses and daffodils are blooming everywhere. The rue in my front garden never even really died this winter- it just looks all crumpled and horrible. In Ohio I winter was hard and I watched for every sign of spring. Here they come too quick and easy.

But then, while I was still on the phone with her, I looked at my other little flower bed. My two ground-covers are starting to vibrant turn green again, and I found hidden under a pile of leaves the thick stems of my hostas beginning to emerge, looking like big daffodils. I've never in all my years noticed hostas before they were big and leafy!

Soon the yard will look like this again. I thought it was too abrupt, but it turns out the problem wasn't with spring or with Charlottesville. It's way of coming is fine. I just forgot to look for it before the signs became obvious.

Things I Feel Strongly About: Sleep Reprise

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:52:00 +0000

There were five days in the middle of last week that I wasn't particularly a fan of. Why? Well, I couldn't sleep for four out of five of those nights. Pretty sure that did it.

No idea what brought this on. No particular change in much of anything in my life. Kristi says it comes to pretty much all of the women in our family eventually. No particular reason. I say - lame.

A change of scene helps a bit. I spent the second half of two nights cuddled into the corner of my couch and a third on the floor of my closet. Don't worry - I have a particularly amazing closet. It's not as odd as it sounds.

Well, it's almost as odd as it sounds.

I said here before I care about sleep. I know what happens when I don't sleep. Believe me - we don't like it.

But the worst moment is always that one in the middle of the night when you realize that the thing you most want, the very thing you most need, is for some inexplicable reason the only thing completely out of reach. No matter how badly you desire it or how hard you try.

I hate that.

A love story

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:43:00 +0000

I never understood people with an emotional connection to their instruments. Really? It's just an instrument. Sure, I feel a mild affection for my oboe. But if someone offered me a true Grenadilla Loree? No regrets.

I think I get it now.

On Saturday I bought a Washburn hollow bodied jazz guitar. Now, I work in a music store so I play a lot of guitars. I get excited about them - especially the $4,000 hand-crafted ones. But I didn't fall for them. I fell for this one.

Here's the thing: a classical is too tame, too mellow. A steel string is too twangy. A solid body electric is too thin and whiny. They're all great in other people's music and other people's styles, but don't make a whit of sense for mine.

But this jazz guitar. . . it lives in the perfect in between space. Still electric, so I can do all kinds of fun pedal-y things (which I will!). Yet it's got a full, rich acoustic sound. And look at it: it's yellow! And has f-holes!

I'm smitten. A simple chord can make me smile. I wasn't even especially excited when I got it home - it felt like this guitar had been sitting in the corner of my room forever. It makes sense. It fits me. And I'm playing it all the freaking time. My wrists don't appreciate it, but I can't quite stop.

It's nice when things make sense.

(carrie took these photos for me. i played with them in photoshop.)

Happy Raccoon Day

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:15:00 +0000

I've never loved Valentines day. So, in college we decided to co-opt the holiday with our alternative: Raccoon Day.

Ok; Raccoon day may not have been the cultural phenomenon we'd hoped. Truthfully, we just sent each other cards with raccoons photos and tried to ignore all the mush around us. But it was our version of fighting back. (And flirting. Shhh. I didn't say that. )

This year? By far the best Valentines Day ever. I don't know that I've ever had less answers in regards to my romantic entanglements. Neither have I been more content.

It didn't hurt that I had the hottest date(s) around.

The four of us from Port Rougemont (note: new house name. May this one stick. Please.) had a brilliant dinner at an abandoned Moroccan restaurant where we were chided by the staff for using a mussel shell for a spoon.

From there we proceeded to execute Valentines Day Mission, Part II. On the downtown mall we strolled two by two, arm in arm. The goal: creme brule and faux romantic conversation. Before midnight our mission was accomplished and the post mission photo shoot began.

Unfortunately, sometimes a night out with "the girls" feels like a substitute for something we want more. This year I didn't want that something more - not even the very attractive something more in the grey t-shirt by the bar. That kind of more always turns out to be less, anyhow.

Why would I possibly want to be in any other stage of life when I'm so deeply happy now?

On Timeliness

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:22:00 +0000

Last spring a friend of a friend facebooked me with compliments on my photos. She asked if I would shoot on commission, and though mildly bemused, I agreed to try.

Her photo was to be of lily of the valley. Where to find it here in C-ville? No idea, but the flowers were particularly important to her, so I began investigating.

I asked co-workers, the lady at the flower shop where I buy myself flowers (that's a whole separate story - tell you later), the owner of the camera shop I frequent... No dice.

Until one day I was at my brother's house shooting all the springy-things I could find. In among the poison ivy I found lily of the valley. Lots of it.

Here's the problem: that was last spring. It's now February and I've still never given her the photos. I think by this point I feel guilty and just would rather not deal with it.

This is never a helpful pattern.

This is always a common pattern.

Photographic Memory

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:10:00 +0000

My internal hard drive is almost full again. Photos are of course the culprit. But when it looks like this. . .

What else can you do?

This was my street this morning at 9:00. I hadn't slept much at all because of some wonderfully perfect houseguests-for-the-storm, but when they left at 8:30 I simply couldn't go back to sleep. So, I wandered the streets instead, having the most charmingly quirky conversations with long time C'villians. Remind me to tell you about them sometime. . .

The question is: would a photographic memory solve my hard drive problem?

Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:29:00 +0000

Creativity is a funny beast.

Things I Feel Strongly About: Sleep

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:14:00 +0000

This is actually the post I was intending to write first, but my "intro" explanation blog snuck its way in. Take two.

I think I had been sleep deprived for almost 10 years. Once I started a 30 minute daily drive to school in middle school there wasn't much hope. I thought it was normal until my final year of college.

I still don't know what tipped the boat and pushed me into that sweet sea of regular sleep, but once I had tasted it. . . remember the sea Prince Caspian and Reepicheep find at the end of the book Voyage of the Dawn Treader? Honestly, it's a lot like that. No wonder they never wanted to leave.

That year I started choosing sleep over those extra revision of the paper, or the wine and cheese night just down the street, or or or or or. Life holds infinite "or"s, I found. But with enough sleep the "or"s actually fit together better! I got sick less. The ups and downs of emotions evened out a bit. And my grades didn't drop a bit, even with some fudging here and there.

I really, really like sleep. It's fun, I usually remember my dreams when I'm sleeping enough, and it's so darn good for you. For me.

Turns out I feel strong about taking care of yourself. But that's a post of its own. . .

Things I Feel Strongly About: Intro

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:39:00 +0000

Here begins a series I have been trying to write for months. Last weekend, however, a close friend called me out on a similar topic. Thus, "months" has magically transformed into "now".

I am told I state my opinions strongly. Especially where emotions are involved. And that this can be. . . disconcerting. To say the least.

However, it came as an immense surprise for me to discover I have strong opinions. Yes, I hear your snorts of laughter. Especially you, oh siblings-mine. Yet somehow I managed to make it well into my college years before finding the courage to own my opinions and to let them face opposition.

I still find myself pulling back in trepidation at odd times. It's a scary thing, holding opinions that may well be wrong!

So, my current opinion is that this is one of those pendulum things. I was too far to one side, now I've gone farther to the opposite than might be ideal. This is actually hopeful because, barring a breakthrough in perpetual motion, all pendulums eventually reach a point of equilibrium.

In the meantime, apologies to those of you who come into contact with my overzealous opinions. Feel free to bonk me on the head with a rolled up newspaper and tell me to back off.

And I'm still going to make a blog series about them.

inarticulate images

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:40:00 +0000

I'm thinking about family a lot right now. It's my sister's birthday tomorrow, I believe. Hmm - it's going to be really embarrassing if I'm wrong about that in this all-too-public forum. My father's heading to the Philippines tomorrow to coordinate flooding relief work. And, of course, I keep seeing these old photos. . .

my mother with my oldest brother. . .

Photos like this - family like I have - find me the most trapped inside my own inarticulateness. Surprised again and again by my inability to comprehend something so simple as the passing of time. . . or to use words to name their almost-invisibly-woven-thought-everything place in my life.

Flow Charts Are Fun!

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000

Found this as a shared link in my google reader (thank you Kathy!) and it made me so very happy. Somehow I've become the local tech expert, which bewilders me on a quite regular basis.

This is totally how I do it.

Go to xkcd - A Webcomic to see this comic in it's natural habitat or to spot more like it.

On Classical Guitar

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:08:00 +0000

I said to myself I would blog again. But once the keys are within reach I'm not entirely sure what it was I thought I could say.

It's been an incredible week. The fingertips of my left hand are tingling from trying again to play the sharpie-decorated classical guitar my sister got in Bolivia and gifted to me one Christmas. Part of what I was playing:

"Am I water
After all this time?
Am I starlight?

Am I starlight
After shadows climb?
Am I water?

Silent as a semaphore
Back then when I went to war

Do you read me
In the afternoon
From a distance?

Take a message
Scribbled as I move
Do you read me?"

lyrics kimberly glick and jonathan reuel

(Side Note)

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:10:00 +0000

My almost-creepy stalker (reverse stalker?) feed that tells me when there are hits on this blog just informed me: even though I haven't posted since May (*gasp!*), I still get hits here daily. From friendly places like Goshen and Charlottesville and Millersburg where I actually know people.

Wow. This strikes me as deeply hopefully in a bigger-than-blogging way. To think that even when you disappear for 3 months, mess up, don't follow through, whatever. . . there are still people who will stick around and still be there when you come back?! Amazing.

Finally!

noreply@blogger.com (Kimberly) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:03:00 +0000

Performed again tonight. Also, I've been editing photos slowly as life permits. I'm managing a music store these days. Loving it, but far too busy for my taste. I miss running sound. And I've been oddly introverted - it takes tons of energy to be around people, and for the most part I'd rather spend my evenings at home alone or mostly alone.

Time is what I covet most. And maybe a iPod touch. But mostly time.