It started flurrying around noon, but by 4 o'clock there was 3-4 inches accumulation. I went for a walk on the unplowed roads, walking in tire tracks, snow crunching beneath my feet. The hush, the cars creeping along slowly, carefully. Those small SUVs suck in this weather. Their center of gravity is so high and wheel base so close, I saw one (slowly) sliding down a hill, just barely able to stop at a stop sign.
I trudged around a bit, and getting back to my parents' house, stomped the snow from my shoes. The things we never do in San Francisco. There was snow on my hood and all in the creases of my coat. I have to stop thinking that moving to San Francisco was the worst decision I've made in my life, but it's hard to convince myself.
I set up my full drumset for the first time in almost two years, probably the last time for a long while. I'm rusty, but it felt and sounded so good. It made me wonder why I haven't been doing this, but, no, I suck, and San Francisco sucks, and I'm not going back to this.
I appreciate and feel blessed to have experienced the feeling I have when I play, but I don't have to do it. I took pictures of the set-up with my digi, and I'll leave the memory stick with the set just in case someone in the future (my brother and his wife are going to have a boy, they found out this week), needs to see how to set it up. Or to at least encourage anyone to set it up the way I set it up.
It's been nice being here, but it gets too comfortable. I forgot that's one of the reasons that I should keep my visits here short, 3-4 days max. This is not my reality, and I start to lose touch with what I need to be doing.
On the other hand, it makes me think that entering Deer Park will mostly be a change in environment, not my being. I start doing what I naturally do when I'm here (ADD around), which is different from what I "do" in San Francisco (try to keep to a schedule), but whether I'm here or in San Francisco or Deer Park, there are only slight variations in my "being". Or so I think. There is no basis why I think I know what it would be like at the monastery for a long period.
I was walking in downtown Englewood, and caught a snippet of a conversation between a mother and adult daughter. It crossed my mind, "Did she really need to say that in that tone of voice?" Among other things I thought of, like the upper middle class suburban cultural context, I thought, yes, she probably did.
We're trying to communicate and based on our background and knowledge of our family members, we take into consideration what we feel is the most effective way to get a point across. Antagonistic, patronizing, sarcastic, exasperated – whatever we feel will work. I use a matter-of-fact, glib, neutral tone of voice with my family for any number of reasons, the least not being that I don't show emotion to these people, as emotions are not a part of our family vocabulary.
Actually, my mother was getting naggy about something (probably about me needing warm clothes (I don't)), and I ended the discussion with a sentence with a slightly forceful tone, and my father and brother turned and noticed.
It's been a long, long time that I've expressed anything but neutral emotions here, even that slight bit of antagonism was a surprise. This family has made me a master of letting things slide.
I *heart* my Yamaha Beech Customs:
December 6, 2003; 12:06 A.M.
