Moving on Up

Well, we're finally all settled in at our new house. This is my fourth place of residence in this city (already?!?) and I can definitely see each place has been an improvement. And I'm completely enamored with this one. (See pictures) It's colorful, cool, quiet, spacious, and distinct. My favorite things are the dining room floor (tiles with grapes on them), the tamarind tree outside my door (see picture at left), and the convenient store across the street.

Something happens to me whenever I move into a new house. First, I get obsessed about organizing it; I can't practice, eat, or do anything really at all, until it's all arranged. Then, at the beginning, I become a total perfectionist- wanting everything to be clean and flawless. I feel the
mentality spill over into my life too. It's refreshing because I feel like I'm starting anew (and this time I'm going to do it all the right way), but it's also entirely delusional.

In fact, I've always felt this pendulum within myself, sometimes swinging wider than others. On one side is the calm, collected, boring, predictable, organized, clean person that does everything well, without rushing or cramming. On the other side is the slightly crazy, more creative, spontaneous, fast-paced person that never really finishes projects and is always too busy to do her best. I never feel like I really

have a balance, I'm always on one side or the other. One side feels artistic and alive but overwhelmed and stressed out. The other feels a bit dull, but calm and satisfied and on top of my stuff.

Perhaps there's nothing wrong with this. Perhaps we are all a bit manic-depressive. Perhaps it's even healthy. Perhaps it's the waning and waxing of the moon.

Whatever it is, I will attest that I think it's evening out as I grow older. In fact, I feel productive and organized and fun and spontaneous at the same time more often than not down here. Now if I could only figure out how to be all that, and get back into an intense practice routine that will soon become necessary...

More about that, the future, that is, later. For now, the present is pretty great. Beautiful house, beautiful weather, good friends, today I had a good rehearsal with my accompanist and spent some time with a pretty cool (ok, really fantastic) guy, it's Friday, and MT is making fish tacos and we're going to crack open a bottle of white wine...ahhh...