Brief Respite

Today is dull and pale compared to this weekend, though I am grateful for the respite from the rain.  We're expecting more on Thursday and Friday, which while it does not please me, it changed the forecast for this weekend to sunny.  And I'm in the beginning of The Swan Thieves, so I've asked G to go to D.C. to the National Gallery to see the Leda painting.  The sun will make for a nice trip, but strangely I was looking forward to a little rain as I spent time in the museum.  I am a romantic and the idea of a grey day brightened by my love of art entices me.  It has me longing for the painting by Monet that so captured me in Cambridge.  


I spent this morning at the diner where G and I are known well enough that I can get my own coffee from behind the counter.  The waitress I most often converse with is young, (22, which makes G laugh when I call her young, since I'm only a few years older, but some days I feel ancient), but never knew my name, and today when another called me by name she mistook it for Katie.  I didn't bother correcting her in the 2 hours that I was there.  Strange, and perhaps a bit awkward, but there were so many other people and I feared embarrassing her.  I am sure I will correct her later, or another waitress will.  It doesn't bother me in the least, as Katie is what my younger brother called me when he was younger and couldn't pronounce my name, and it was a common mistake in college.  To be truthful, I am not a fan of my name, have even debated changing it, but don't bother as I don't attach too much to my name.  I've always been quite odd about it, planning to act and publish under different names.  Maybe it's a way of allowing myself a freedom within those things.


I feel as if on a precipice.  G says that one thing he loves about me more than so many other things is that I am absolutely a mess when it comes to what I want to do with my life.  Because there are so many things.  He understands that even in these moments where my emotions perplex him.  We are both lovers of education, and both aspire to collect degrees.  But lately I feel these itches.  I want to pick up my charcoals and paints, my fingers resting lightly as I relearn something which used to come so naturally to me.  I want to type up the novels (several lately) that introduce themselves to myself in my head, but fear I will never be eloquent enough in the wording to do them justice.  I want to splurge on a new violin and make the music fly like lightning from the tips of my fingers.  


Fear is a powerful thing, keeping so many people like myself from leaping off the cliff for fear of the abyss.  I too often can get lost in myself, and I am afraid that if I leap I might risk this life I have built for myself.  That fear then manifests itself in frustration.  Irritation.  Irrational really, for G has always been my biggest supporter.  But I think in some ways I have held myself back for fear of my fire burning up our life.  But it's left neither of us happy.  We've both been fearful.  


I sat today reading my novel, itching for a canvas, or even a museum to explore.  Some get bored by the endlessness of art museums, choosing to pick a gallery and explore something they feel safe within.  I prefer to dance throughout the galleries, getting lost, letting it overwhelm me.  It calms me in a way that I have never quite been able to explain.  And I go within myself, but never feel alone.  I am with the art, and more often than not it explodes with emotions I have yet to learn how to express in life, though my fingers know the way.