Eine kleine nachtmusik...

I am so far behind in my work that it is almost embarrassing. I say almost because if I were actually truly guilty I wouldn't be up, past midnight writing this, but rather I would continue to make my flash cards, delineating cursive curves, still foreign to me.

I. loves Sunday school, and went this morning with my neighbors. She came home singing "He's got the whole world in his hands" last time, for earth day, and I figure, heck, bible study and such is just a form of creating cultural literacy, and I take it all with a grain of salt. She asks if she can go to "our kind of Sunday school" when she lives with her Bobe next year. Once again, they proceed with plans formed if not behind my back, using it merely as a bridge.

There were multiple videochats today. Her father was assaulted yesterday, it would seem. And I am worrying. I always do. I am assaulted too, by my own senses, the smell of NH springs forth pulsing in sound waves. I have been listening to old recordings, late into the night. I just got my hands on some that I had considered lost forever, and there we are 5 years younger, playing for a small yet enthusiastic crowd. They clap wildly, and I hear us... we were something for that little crowd. María's voice and mine blend together in warm mezzo tones and harmony abounds. I can almost feel how good the rub of voices was, when you hit spot on and you know it. The interweaving of ascending and descending tones that meet in the middle and create something new.

I need to make music again. Right. With what time? Just like I need to get outside more often, and ride, and swim, and design all the summer's projects that have been put on hiatus until I get those five minutes of time to myself. I grumble, but I cook, and I go out dancing, because, I think, I won't always be able to. And I sing along with Bob, and get irresistibly sweaty, and it feels good to be in this terribly American setting (because only Americans can move in such ungraceful ways--but I don't care, they are still, somehow, my people even if they can't dance), with this terribly American music that I appropriated long ago as my own but puts me in an age cohort that preceeds me by 15-20 years (which in fact works to my advantage).

And Mexico calls me back, to the film archives, and the libraries, the worn tread of the cultural paths, feet shuffling. I will go back alone, and I will be alone the way I want to be, or the way that I ought to be, or the way I was, back then, waking up the neighbors with the strumming of guitars at 4 am, just Me and Bobby McGee.

To rediscover the world, through a little bit of night music.