The opposite of reverse.

I found myself wandering-with-purpose in the Financial District tonight. It was a perfect 65 degrees and the buildings quietly churned with swing-shift tidying. On a street I have walked hundreds of times, I found myself staring at the new location of an old employer. There was no rush of feeling, bad or good, just a slow smile. Well, there you are again. And I kept going.

Beat the drum slowly.

So we have turned the corner from I am joyfully beating drums to wow, I am really not good at this. In the first class, it was expected (by me) that everyone would not be good at this, and there is freedom (for me) in not being the only person flailing about. Not to say that sometime between weeks one and three everyone else got magically awesome at taiko and I did not, but as with anything, the further you progress with an activity that requires not only skill but stamina and perseverance, the wider the gaps between how well people can do it.

Which is not to say it makes me miserable, but it certainly does not give me the rush it did initially, which is disappointing but then I get disappointed in my disappointment, because certainly everyone who was ever good at something realized how not-good they were at it first — with the natural exception of child prodigies, those jerks — and I am sad that I can’t be just a happy-go-lucky, not-good-at-this person, so I stare at my arms going off into the stratosphere instead of neatly, cleanly whacking the drum and just mourn for the abject death of the me that is awesome at taiko.

Because it is one thing to see something and want to be good at it and another thing entirely to find out that you are not good at it. The door closes; I will never be Sheila E — and I so wanted to be her for a hot minute in the ’80s — and that is okay when I think about it in the context of doing something I am at least okay at, but so very not okay when I think about it in the context of my whole life, the one that grows shorter by the moment. I don’t want closed doors. I want to walk through any door I want. Well, not any door. There are some doors, like the me I would be as a serial killer, that I don’t want to open at all. Even though I think I’d be a nice one like Dexter. But most doors! Most doors I would like to walk through because I would like to do a lot of things before this mortal coil gets shuffled off and all.

And I really do not feel like patting myself on the back for even trying it. I know parents say that to their kids, that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose it’s how you play the game, but really? What if your kid was playing the game so badly? Singing so off-key? At what point do you say, no, it’s kind of not about playing the game and more about being at least a little good at the game with the promise of being really good at the game someday? Or do you just let your kid keep on, as long as your kid is happy and having a good time?

Is that the point? If you’re having fun, don’t let your skill-level interfere with that? That seems sensible. But you have to push through a lot of not-fun to get better at things, right? I don’t know. I don’t remember. The things I like doing I sucked at initially but I was happy anyway because I was doing the things, and that is what mattered. I have been raucously heckled at open-mic nights, and even then it didn’t occur to me to stop writing because I love to write. I have frogged nearly half a knitting project and merely chuckled about it later. Will I ever make a sweater for FunkyPlaid that I won’t be embarrassed to see him wear outside of the house? I do not know, but the not-knowing won’t stop me from trying because I love to knit.

I want to see the taiko class through because I hate not finishing things I have started, but I am not sure where that hatred comes from, and if it is a good reason to continue or if it is a pattern born of societal or familial pressures. Not that those are exclusive, but I am old enough to be doing things for my own reasoning now instead of lazily accepting how I’ve always done it.

Doing stuff with pictures instead of words.

Sometimes I want to write and sometimes I don’t. The periods of “don’t” usually coincide with feeling sick, as if writing is only something I undertake in the spirit of health. Strange, considering the number of times I have written myself out of black moods.

Over the weekend, in between sneezes and coughs, I finally worked on a Second Life snap I took last summer. I didn’t want to upload it anywhere until I had a chance to work on some of its flaws, but I didn’t know how to do that until my friend Lillian — whose pictures you really should look at, go on, I’ll be here when you get back — gave me a tutorial on a few Photoshop tricks.

Rarely, I get to capture quiet moments like afternoon tea with Marian in her lovely home. Most of my Second Life is spent playing trivia in large groups or futzing around with stuff on my own. Occasionally I take pictures of myself, but I get bored with that pretty quickly, probably because I don’t have the patience to sift through the world for poses and clothing I like.

Most of the time I take pictures of nothing in particular.

The Week in Tweets on 2011-02-25

• Every Sunday shall henceforth be celebrated with taiko class followed by a feast of cured meats and oysters. So say we all! #fb #
• My Top 3 Weekly #lastfm artists: They Might Be Giants (13), Florence + the Machine (13) & Mates of State (11) #music http://bit.ly/9AOZf1 #
• I am so over the moon for taiko that I don't want to write about it yet. I will spare you the links to the eleventy videos I've watched. #fb #
• Good morning, first day of new job and winter semester. Let us rock. #fb #
• The not-so-great Islamist menace http://j.mp/fx3qIU via @AddToAny #
• My avg. daily #fitstats for last week: 5,340 steps, 2.2 miles, 1,828 calories burned via my fitbit http://www.fitbit.com/user/22D4J8 #
• Job worked, homework begun, dinner cooked, brain blank. The best Monday I have had in a while! #fb #
• In case you were wondering, 6am is very early. #queenofobvious #
• Day two of new job: thoroughly enjoyable. Shuttle rocks. Books smell good. Dinner in slow-cooker. Short sentences win. #fb #
• I will tell you a secret: I kind of missed having a job and doing homework. #fb #
• That was an impressive nightmare mashup of every crappy relationship argument I've ever had and "Dinner: Impossible". #fb #
• It's a blue canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over you! http://bit.ly/emQtbc (via @allura) #fb #
• Brown's proposed budget eliminates state funding for public libraries http://t.co/HDujCQB #
• I dub this cute skirt "Black Ice". Acetate fabric + jostling shuttle = meeting new coworkers by landing in their laps. #fb #
• #portlandia #

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Portlandia, ho!

I adore Portland. And I think I just might adore “Portlandia”, the new IFC comedy series written by and starring Fred Armisen (SNL) and Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney). Hulu wouldn’t let me embed the pilot, so here is the teaser.

What it should be.

On the shuttle to work this morning, adrift in a sea of North Face jackets and jeans and sneakers, I held onto my thermal mug of tea and marveled at how we never ever get very far from high school. The seats may be softer, but we bounce around just the same.

I have read too much about what content on the web should be. I admit to being very tired of this “should be” talk, external or internal. I would take a side, but taking a side means there are sides to take. We can argue about who is doing it better, whose content is more important, but how does that work, exactly? Are journal entries less important than reviews of iPhone apps? Who decides this, and why?

My first taiko class taught me something I forgot: be still, eyes open, and embrace the lack of knowledge. There was lots of joyful drum-pounding, too, of course. But the most enjoyable aspect of it all was not knowing anything about it, absorbing, failing, and learning. The new job is like this too, albeit with less failure yet because mentors are ever-present.

Waking at six in the morning, I always feel a little drunk. The house is dark and the cats snuggle in closer to the other human and the walls and floor seem to shift as my eyes adjust or don’t. Characters from bad dreams slouch around the corners, smirk at my stumbles. I see the shade of you in the black hallway, and I cannot tell if you are walking toward me or away.

The Week in Tweets on 2011-01-09

• My avg. daily #fitstats for last week: 4,520 steps, 1.9 miles, 1,800 calories burned via my fitbit http://www.fitbit.com/user/22D4J8 #
• I got all riled up because my @fitbit wouldn't sync. It's fixed, but I am no longer sleepy. Why can't I just leave things until the morning? #
• O, endorphins! Just finished #c25k week 1 run 2 with #GetRunning – 28½ minutes of exercise and 8 minutes of running. Next run: Thursday 6th. #
• I am waiting (impatiently) for the homemade gluten-free chicken nuggets to cook. In the slow-cooker. What a world! #fb #
• Gluten-free chicken nuggets served with a side of honey-cinnamon glazed carrots: total win. Our slow-cooker rules. #fb #
• I made coffee in the french press that @FunkyPlaid gave me for Christmas. I may have used too much coffee. #pleaselegstopbouncing #
• “Aflockalypse” — Mass Animal Deaths Now Mapped on Google http://bit.ly/gd6n8y #
• Sending off this unemployment with a bang: Swan Oyster Depot with @fsquared, then sitting in an office, waiting for paperwork. Um. #fb #
• I told someone to go ahead of me because he was in a hurry. Everyone, including the hurrying guy, just stared at me. #waitingroomsareweird #
• Was that an earthquake? #
• A nice 4.4 quake! It was gentle. I ran to the doorway; the cats slept on. http://bit.ly/gx3GGe #
• I am disappointed that Twitter for Mac (Tweetie 2.0) ditched bit.ly integration and right-side alignment of my tweets. #
• OK, I'll play. Describe me in three words on threewords.me! #threewordsme http://t.co/VW73e1f #
• I do not understand why our cats need to be in the bathroom while I am in the bathroom. #
• Deeply disappointing yet not surprising. 7 people injured, 4 killed. Arizona Congresswoman Shot – Truthdig http://bit.ly/g0Sl6A #
• OK, I am way too nervous about my first taiko class tomorrow morning. Calm down, self! It's okay to be a beginner! #fb #
• It is decided: @SteveMartinToGo wins Twitter. #

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It was not the quesadilla.

It was not the quesadilla, the sloppy concoction of flat and goo. No, she decided, it was most certainly not the quesadilla itself, but the idea of the quesadilla, the meta-dilla that offended her. Even now, even hours after lunch, six washings with perfumed soap, six applications of scented lotion, and in between all that an hour at the firing range. Lavender? No. Gunpowder? No. Only the crass grease and onion stink.

Lovers, too, were like this. Long after they should have gone, they persisted with deserted panties, apostrophes of basin-beached hair. Now email and its hungrier cousins encroached on every absence. The heart grew annoyed, not fonder. She longed for the gentleness of memory in all of this rotting truth.

Rossy de Palma in Double Zero - © 2004 Warner Bros.

One more week.

The winter semester starts next Monday, as does my new job, so I have one more week to power through my to-do list before the big items hit. These items are very exciting, I assure you, the kind of exciting that I have been putting off for months. Yet I persist. I am also trying some new recipes so that I will have more momentum to cook dinner regularly. Tonight I made another salmon dish, although I still have yet to find that perfect salmon cooking temperature and time. I made balsamic maple glaze from this recipe, and I liked the taste a lot. Paired with my favorite roasted potatoes with sage brown-butter sauce recipe, it was a nice, cozy meal.

Today I thought I might run some errands or clean my closet, but instead I did some file and finance reorganization. I am working on scanning the documents I only need soft-copies of, then shredding the originals, but I need a nice big external backup drive first. Any recommendations?

I thought Holidailies was over, but it continues for another couple of days. I did not do so well at the end of December, and have only the World of Warcraft to blame. The good news is that I have almost won the World of Warcraft, so we can all go back to our other hobbies soon. Maybe mid-March.

You know what my favorite show is?

I wish I had proper attribution for this; I saw it on Plurk.