Music Critic

My ukulele has been on the bottom rack of my art stool as that makes it convenient and easy to grab for fiddling with.  It's fairly safe, which is about as good as it gets for the $25 dollar model, and the brilliant orange color lures me in like a tin foil ball.  There's a chip in the back where the kids at school argued about who had a turn last and dinged it.  I don't mind, really; the kangaroo court they immediately set up to scourge the supposed wrongdoer was vehement and would have sent a French executioner blushing. All of a sudden it was one person's fault, and they smelt blood.

The instrument is home now, and since I have the clumsiest of fingers, until recently was in the pile of musical interests including a concertina, a dulcimer, a zither, a gong, recorders, things that you shake, many wooden frogs of varied pitches, and the ukulele which is as close to a legitimate instrument that I have ever owned.  I have no musical talent.  Zip.  If thrumming produces two notes that go together, success is claimed.  It took me four years to figure out how to properly hold the thing so that my fingers fit into the frets, but once that epiphany arrived, I've been practicing.

Numbness has set in my fingertips, along with hard little dents that don't go away.  Alarming to lose sensation in any body part, but feeling is coming back slowly irregardless of what tactic the internet blares that day.  "STOP immediately or there will be permanent damage!"  "Go ahead and play, the nerves will return."  In spite of the fuzziness I didn't want to stop, for even just strumming was soothing.

Currently, a simplified version of "Here Comes the Sun" is creaking along in fits and starts, it takes only six chords to get a reasonable facsimile and I am in further awe of people who can do this smoothly.  I made a point to practice this evening and have the G, C, D, A positions down if you can wait a minute for me to arrange phalanxes correctly without overlap.  Yup.  Riffs, strumming patterns, tuning, it's coming along.

Tonight, while imagining showing a bit to a girlfriend who has taken ukulele lessons from a professional, I noticed what I thought to be a shred of brown cardboard inside the body, stuck to the label.  Cardboard from the scratching post, but it didn't move when I tried shaking it out, so I put on my glasses and looked and it's a hapless, hopeless spider.  Blowing on it as a Life-O-Meter check caused one leg to waggle ever so weakly, the other seven being scrunched up under it in a ball of spider legs.  

The enthusiasm given the G chord while also picking out the bridging may have jounced the critter to Spider Heaven which the hell I hope is nowhere near Human Heaven.  It also glued itself onto the label, meaning that a Q-Tip held in a pair of pliers or extra-long chopsticks will perform the surgical removal.  Maybe the leg just moved from me poking at it, or was it a final wave of surrender to the Gods of Vibration?  I think the poor thing fell in while exploring, and had no way to get out, but how long have I been practicing with it trapped in misery?  Good thing spiders are deaf.

Halloween comes this Monday, and the children are dancing four inches off the ground in anticipation.  Every teacher prays that please God, let no well-meaning parent send in cupcakes, for they are the bane of desktops, floors, clothing, hair, and sane digestion with that gloppy froth of grease dolloped atop as "frosting" by supermarkets.  Sheet cakes are worse.  "I thought you would have plates and a knife..."  Really?  I can't have a knife in my classroom nor take the time to dice  cake into chunks and hand out during Screaming Child Fun Time.  Go away, ye parent who serves their royal offspring.  Thy sheet cake is sloven, thy Hawaiian Punch stains plot sticky treason on the linoleum.

Rainy day here, snowed a bit in the hinterlands leaving frost on the pumpkins in the early morning hours.  The cascade of shortened days are barreling into the end of autumn, as fields become empty and brown themselves to sleep.  The summer corn is gone, perhaps a few tomatoes are left; it's the hard, knotty fruits and vegetables that are rounding out the season.  Heads of cauliflower, heavy squashes, apples, pumpkins, rutabagas, onions, things that can be stored a bit for later suppers.  This part of the earth is readying itself for sleep.

Let your coracle of dreams carry you over the dark, somnambulant waves in rising levels, you already know who you are, who you were meant to be; so begin, begin with loving yourself so that you may love others.  Happiness is in your hands.  Good night.