Reunited with My Old Lovers
10:03 AM Posted In books , old lovers , piano Edit This 0 Comments »
Still recovering from my looong vacation stupor, I managed to scavenge the maternal ancestral house with the old books I used to take with me to the loo when I was between the ages 7 and 11 (i got my first teen mag at 12..so you can figure out what happened after that, and yes I DO read in the toilet hehe)...one of these books I brought back with me to Cebu. The book had short biographies of many outstanding people in history. So far, the only biography I've ever read from this book was that of Helen Keller's. Why I never managed to move on from her story, I really don't know. At 7, I had no idea who Lou Gehrig, Robert E.Lee, Mohandas Gandhi, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Pavlova, or Florence Nightingale were. I only cared to read Helen's story because of her beautiful portrait shown in the book,perhaps enthralled by her charming face and beautiful dress , and the only thing I remembered about Florence Nightingale was that she had an owl named Athena...and yes, I learned that from a caption of her portrait,too.
Today, I flipped through the book again, and discovered that more than decade after, these names have become familiar to me. Who hasn't heard of Lou Gehrig's disease? Who doesn't know of Gandhi and his works? Who hasn't read Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious and dark literary contributions? And to nurses reading this, haven't you had enough hearing about Nightingale already?
I picked Mozart from the Table of Contents.. I was hungry for the feeling of awe and amazement. He was a child prodigy.Perfect.
To make the long story short---and no surprise--I didn't manage to finish Mozart's story. I was too bewitched by the idea of playing the piano again. I couldn't anymore remember the last time I spent hours pounding the keys, and the sheer joy I experienced upon completing a piece. At first, I tried to pacify the feverish longing with some daydreaming while iTunes did the playing for me. But the feeling of excitement didn't escape me until the wee hours of early morning. Having spent most of the afternoon and dinnertime with Keith, my number one lover (haha..sobrang cheesyyy..), I was left until midnight to hunt for my old piano books.
Lost in a random pile of beauty magazines (really, how my priorities and interests have changed over the years!), I found four of them, along with some printed pieces: Fur Elise, Ballad Pour Adeline,Turkish March, Cannon in D...
I stared at the Ballad Pour Adeline piece for a moment...Ten pages...Having only gone through about five grades (based on how many books you have completed), playing the rest (and the hardest parts) of the piece was not yet my battle. And I wasn't ready to bore my brains out with Fur Elise. A piece I had overplayed. Turkish March...too fast. Cannon in D...too Korean novela-ish. I resolved to playing the lessons in my old books. Being lost in trance-like moments, the fumbling to find the right key, the stopping mid-piece because it didn't sound right...they all came back to me in a flash flood of recall. It was like being lost in wonderful reverie.
A good read, a piano piece, a gentle caress on the piano keys...things I have taken for granted for so long. Old lovers I have almost forgotten.Old lovers that brought simple yet unceasing joy.Old lovers that provided unfathomable revelations to the soul.
When I take off my uniform at the end of the day, with renewed fervor, I look forward to embracing my 0ld lovers again.
Today, I flipped through the book again, and discovered that more than decade after, these names have become familiar to me. Who hasn't heard of Lou Gehrig's disease? Who doesn't know of Gandhi and his works? Who hasn't read Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious and dark literary contributions? And to nurses reading this, haven't you had enough hearing about Nightingale already?
I picked Mozart from the Table of Contents.. I was hungry for the feeling of awe and amazement. He was a child prodigy.Perfect.
To make the long story short---and no surprise--I didn't manage to finish Mozart's story. I was too bewitched by the idea of playing the piano again. I couldn't anymore remember the last time I spent hours pounding the keys, and the sheer joy I experienced upon completing a piece. At first, I tried to pacify the feverish longing with some daydreaming while iTunes did the playing for me. But the feeling of excitement didn't escape me until the wee hours of early morning. Having spent most of the afternoon and dinnertime with Keith, my number one lover (haha..sobrang cheesyyy..), I was left until midnight to hunt for my old piano books.
Lost in a random pile of beauty magazines (really, how my priorities and interests have changed over the years!), I found four of them, along with some printed pieces: Fur Elise, Ballad Pour Adeline,Turkish March, Cannon in D...
I stared at the Ballad Pour Adeline piece for a moment...Ten pages...Having only gone through about five grades (based on how many books you have completed), playing the rest (and the hardest parts) of the piece was not yet my battle. And I wasn't ready to bore my brains out with Fur Elise. A piece I had overplayed. Turkish March...too fast. Cannon in D...too Korean novela-ish. I resolved to playing the lessons in my old books. Being lost in trance-like moments, the fumbling to find the right key, the stopping mid-piece because it didn't sound right...they all came back to me in a flash flood of recall. It was like being lost in wonderful reverie.
A good read, a piano piece, a gentle caress on the piano keys...things I have taken for granted for so long. Old lovers I have almost forgotten.Old lovers that brought simple yet unceasing joy.Old lovers that provided unfathomable revelations to the soul.
When I take off my uniform at the end of the day, with renewed fervor, I look forward to embracing my 0ld lovers again.
