Marta ~ May 21

 

There are times when I don't want to write because I don't want to tell anyone about myself. I want to be alone with my stuff. It's probably better that I write and come out of my cave, but in this state I reject the words that suggest themselves instead of trusting them. 

 

This new phone that I ordered arrived yesterday. I put it off for months. I get no pleasure out of these things, think of them as life-destroying little machines, but the old phone had no room for anything anymore even though I extended its sputtering life by deleting little by little almost everything I was asking it to do. During those months of not buying a new phone I considered my alternatives, and then bought a new phone. 

 

I hated it before it arrived and am annoyed by its barrage of auto-suggestions and auto-corrections and how it has expanded on the infantilization and "make-life-easy" quotients. I eliminate them when I can. I like my food unpredigested, thank you, and despite your long list of options for ring-tones, which I am sure took many expensive hours to develop, only one or two are even tolerable, the rest sounding like robots or electronics or metal-on-metal. 

 

I want more time to study Hungarian. I want to overcome the resistance to studying Hungarian. It's one of my favorite things to do and yet it's hard to turn my attention to it. There's always the nagging feeling that I am making no progress, how can I possibly make a dent on the mountain range I have to get through? Though my faltering steps have moved me out of base camp, and perhaps even to the first ledge, which is different than being, say, still in the airport, waiting to depart. So it's a matter of putting my nose into it regardless of how I feel about it in the moment.

When I was a kid, piano practice -- which I had thought would be fun after listening to a child's recording of the Life of Beethoven -- hung over me all week like a guillotine, the week of "tomorrow's" always ending before I was ready. At least now I know that even the tiniest exposure -- if not daily (though I wish I could manage that) at least often -- is the trick. 

 

I made coffee this morning, which I never do, and it was good, and chirped me up a bit. Some days the weight of difficulties looms, other days they shrink to manageability even without solutions. 

 

There is one person whose recordings I listen to. In one track she asks, "Are you unhappy?" and then, "Are you really?" 

 

I pause. I look. And can usually see that down there, beneath the rumble of mutterings, I'm not unhappy at all.