I arrived in Portland after a week+ of family reunion to find all the signs of home: shaggy lawn, shaggy Bonita, clock radio 3 hours ahead from Bonita's usual perch, lots of messages on the answering machine, and too many e-mails to even begin to look at.

The huge house ("The Blue Monkey"), right on Holden Beach, was fabulous. We all gained 10 pounds and got tans. (Though my "tan" means I am only slightly less reflective than usual). There is something I love about having a bathing suit tanned onto my skin. I have no idea why I like it so much.

Now, back to real life.

The "Teka" chinrest is my new favorite chinrest. It feels better than my customized Flesch model, and so far it has fit 4 completely different jawbones of my students comfortably. If you're having trouble finding a comfortable chinrest, (particularly if you have a long neck), give this one a try!

Tomorrow is the last day of Strings Camp at the Portland Conservatory of Music. I've been teaching there all week. The kids are earnest, goofy, sweet, wild, exasperating, and it's been fun, but I'll be ready for a break. Today, after a particularly wild afternoon, I was seriously questioning whether I'm cut out to teach small children. Then one of them came up and gave me a big hug and said, "Valewie, I'm weally going to miss you aftew camp this week," and I suddenly felt better, and remembered why I like teaching music to kids: they encourage me to have more fun, be sillier, and remind myself why I love music. Maybe we all ran around more than I wanted today, but heck, we had fun, and they learned some rounds and some tango music and who knows, maybe they'll remember it later. That's the thing about teaching: sometimes you just never know if what you're doing will be remembered or make a difference in your students' lives. Come to think of it, they might not ever know either.

A Suzuki violin teacher at the Conservatory is retiring in the Spring of 2007. She, the director, and my co-teacher at Strings Camp have all mentioned the fact that there will be an opening for a teacher when she retires. Hint, hint. This teacher observed me teaching her student (weirdly, this did not make me nervous) and I guess it was OK because today we had an interesting discussion about technique and she spoke to me again about possibly taking over her studio.

There's no way I can do it. 20 more students would put me at 32 or 33 students, plus a high school teaching job on top of it, but it did get me thinking about whether I prefer the violin teaching to the high school teaching (not sure), whether I prefer having health insurance and summer vacation (yes, and yes), whether I would like to teach in a conservatory environment (yes), and how I'm going to continue to balance two jobs.

I can't picture giving either one up. The high school teaching has definitely honed my classroom management, and that has had a huge impact on my violin teaching style. This week I've been giving lessons to a wild 6-year-old who is super-sensitive and has ADD, and it's actually been going very well (I think...). The violin teaching keeps me loosened up and happy, and it's a treat to have students in lesson who what to be there and are excited about the violin, after a day of teaching high school students who would [mostly] rather be out smoking pot in the parking lot or, at the very least, playing computer games rather than learning.

Hmmmmmm.

Lori tagged me.

Five things in my freezer:

1. The equivalent of 3 bunches of organic bananas (on sale due to squishiness), sliced, frozen on cookie sheets, and packed in plastic containers


2. A package of seaweed salad from the Sun Oriental Market


3. A bin full of empty shrimp and fish bags. I generate a bag of trash every 3 or 4 months, so keeping the smelly stuff in the freezer means I can put the rest of the trash indoors in a closet until I have enough for a whole bag.


4. Tapioca flour


5. Peeled and minced ginger root

Five things in my closet (clothes closet in my bedroom):

1. A pair of brown corduroy pants I got in the clothing SWAP (Sexy Women Around Portland) that I thought were from Liz until she said she'd never seen them before.


2. An old, crappy pair of ballroom dance shoes (bought in 1998), that I've actually been wearing to tango in because I left my dance heels at a gig and my new ones, bought in part by a generous gift certificate from M., are backordered until September.


3. A blue satin robe, embroidered with a dragon, that my dad brought me from Hong Kong when I was 16


4. My mom's psychadelic wedding dress (circa 1973). The only time I've ever seen that same fabric was in Dolores Park in San Francisco, the day I got back from my permaculture design course. Most other people there were at least partially naked, due to Bay to Breakers...and due to it being a Sunday, which gives every gay man there license to walk around in way less than should be legal.


5. A package of AAA batteries that I bought for something specific, but I can't remember what

Five things in the car:

1. 2 pairs of dance shoes


2. a bulb planter (for those roadside lily-planting emergencies, I guess...)


3. half of a map of Boston and vicinity


4. 2 blankets covering the dirt that I haven't vaccuumed out since I hauled a bunch of rocks


5. bottles of coolant and brake fluid, two things my car has been leaking recently

Five things in my purse:

1. digital camera


2. $0.67 in change (mostly pennies)


3. a pair of cheap sunglasses that somehow got stuck in the bottom of the purse and I'm afraid I'll rip it trying to get them out


4. a folded-over Post-It note that reads "STAMPS"


5. part of a taxicab voucher to the Manchester Airport from Delta Airlines, a remnant of the worst air travel ever on June 29, 2006

Single, yes. But single with an extremely affectionate, fuzzy cat warming my lap. That helps.

Last year when I became single it was due to mutual agreement that something just didn't work, and then I went about my business as usual. This time I hurt. But at least it didn't happen in February--I still have sunny days and bike rides and outdoor tango and all kinds of things to remind me that my life is pretty great. Here are some of them:

• snitching cherry tomatoes from the garden when I'm supposed to be watering
• working on my Murphy bed
• riding my bike to the farmers' market, the library, the beach...
• having legs that do boleos and ganchos! Finally! Better than before MS!
• going shopping and finding 2 pairs of pants that fit perfectly (!), and then walking into Payless and finding a great pair of heels to wear to E.'s wedding for $7
• watching Bonita run in circles trying to pounce on her tail or on her shadow
• feeling my fingers waking up even more--this year, god willing, my left hand will be better on the violin than it was pre-MS
• having a ton of wedding gigs (possibly even too many)
• watching my violin students leap forward in technical ability
• dancing tango outside at High & Congress and inside at the Bar of Chocolate
• playing contradance tunes ("Nail that Catfish to the Wall", anyone?)

So, I'm glum, but life is good. And in several months, maybe it will be back to being wicked good.

I just made this amazing shrimp and brown rice rotini salad with a pesto sauce (minus the Parmesan, due to being mostly dairy-free, and minus the pine nuts, because I didn't have any). It is sooooo good. I had to make myself stop eating it. I used fresh basil from the yard, [homemade] garlic oil, and a few cloves of the garlic from the oil, and still can't figure out why boiled garlic tastes of cheese. It's weird, but it's yummy.

For those days when you want a quick dash of garlicky flavor for...well, whatever, I give you garlic oil:

Garlic Oil

You need:

roughly equal amounts of garlic cloves and olive oil. (Get a couple of large heads of garlic and do a whole bunch at once--it keeps for ages in the fridge and then you can get the oil to cover the garlic in the saucepan).

You do:

Peel the garlic.
Put in small saucepan.
Add the oil.
Heat to a simmer and keep it there for about 20 minutes.
Remove from heat.
Cool.
Pour into jar(s) (leave the garlic in the oil).
Store in fridge.

This is great in dressings, in stir-fries, in pesto (if you don't want the bite of raw garlic), or anywhere you would be using cooked garlic for something. Use just the oil, just the garlic, or both, depending on what you need. Yum.

And if you know why it tastes cheesy, tell me! :-)

I sometimes tell new tango dancers, "it's not so much where your feet are going, but how you're getting to the next step." It's the posture, the windup, the compression into the floor, the speed/slowdown of the middle of the motion that makes tango really look like tango (even if you're just walking forward). Likewise, I often tell my violin students, "it's not so much where your finger lands [even though that's important], but how you get to the next note. I want graceful finger motion!" because every time, improving the quality of the movement improves intonation also--and improves it in a natural way that comes out of having great posture and beautiful motion.

This summer I've been working on improving the frame of my hand by playing Suzuki Book 1 in octaves (only because I just can't get myself to practice scales). I've also been working on comfortable shifting technique by playing everything in Book 1 up an octave or an octave plus a fifth or whatever necessary to practice fairly challenging shifts. In doing both of these exercises, I'm most interested in getting to the next note gracefully.

Last time I learned to play the violin, graceful motion was not stressed. In the beginning, I know my teachers made sure my fingers were going down right, etc., but when I got to a lot of the advanced stuff I just muscled my way through it. This time around, I lack muscle, so I have to do it with technique. And you know, it takes far less time and work to master things like shifting and hand frame when I'm concentrating on posture and graceful motion.

Yesterday I started playing the Fugue from Bach's Sonata #1 for unaccompanied violin, to see how my left hand is doing. The Fugue is a doozy of a finger-twister, with double-, triple-, and quadruple-stops all over the place, and countermelodies (being a fugue...) woven through the melody so thoroughly that I often wonder why the heck Bach didn't just write the thing for 2 violins and save the poor solo violinist all of this agony. Anyway. I never quite mastered it as a first-time violin student and never enjoyed hearing myself play it--it was too choppy with all of the wild jumping around in the left hand.

So yesterday, as a second-time violin student who now has beautiful posture and has been thinking about graceful finger movement, I realized that I'm the teacher I needed the first time around--someone who could show me that this fugue is not about torturing the violinist, but about figuring out how to achieve finger motion so beautiful and natural that playing this ridiculous number of notes actually feels comfortable and fun. I paused in measure 4 at the end of the phrase (F# and C) to think about the beginning of the next phrase, wondering how I could use my new technique to make the passage beautiful instead of abrupt. For a change. Hmmmm.

As I later told L., I had my first and second fingers down and was thinking maybe instead of letting go with my whole hand, I could sort of sneak the third finger underneath the other two fingers and then, with the third finger down, release the other fingers to let my hand expand into position for the next triple-stop. At that moment, I had this vision of me sitting on the climbing wall at Mission Cliffs, knowing that my free foot had to sort of fold itself under me into some totally uncomfortable position in order to get to the next foothold--a position so weird and unnatural-looking that I couldn't believe that I was supposed to do it. But if I just relaxed and went for it (gracefully), the instant it connected, the rest of my body could pivot on that new foot into the next, comfortable position I needed. The motions are exactly the same for the violin, but with smaller appendages. :-)

Now I totally love this fugue, and have to take a hold of the reins and not work on it too much, for fear of tendonitis, and am already thinking maybe I can go have a lesson on it with G. so we can talk technique. Whee!

How handy that I just had my Fugue breakthrough, because I just found out that at next Saturday's wedding on Great Diamond Island, the bridal party wants to process to Air on the G String, played by solo violin.

Wow, I didn't think it was possible, but there's actually something worse than being asked to play the Pachelbel Canon on solo violin; the Canon at least has moving notes. But thanks to my big breakthrough, I am now willingly making up a version of Air on the G String that is pretty faithful to the melody while adding bits of the harmony and bass line once in a while for some harmonic structure and rhythmic pulse. It sounds good and--miracle of miracles--it actually feels good to play, too. Yay! I'm so captivated by it that I'll probably go practice it right now in my sliver of time between weddings.

True happiness is knowing that as soon as I turn off the shower and open the curtain, Bonita will leap in to lick water off the floor of the bathtub. Drinking out of the water dish is so passé.

My friend J. is looking for a girlfriend and has a profile up on match.com that I've been discussing with him during the last couple of weeks. Checking out his profile online now in a list of my "matches", I'm thinking "never again". I burned out of match.com pretty quickly last year. Post-breakup, it occurs to me that I probably wouldn't have liked M.'s profile (if he'd had one), unless he'd gone through it with the spell-checker. :-) Sometimes I am a total spelling and grammar snot. Every once in a while a profile catches my eye, though, and I think I know why.

I like action. I like pictures that show people doing things--not necessarily posing on a mountain, but ones showing someone getting caught on the face by a dog's tongue or slipping on something or laughing wildly. I like it when a camera catches people in the middle of their lives. I like it when people post those photos.

Some people create motion with their words. Sometimes, on a good day, I can too, but it doesn't come easily. A skillful writer hooks me or grabs me or just tugs my sleeve a bit, or startles me into noticing something and my mind moves the way my body would move--it stops to look, it leaps forward, it jumps wildly between associations, making me dizzy and alert when I'm trying to fall asleep or propelling me into wakefulness from a chaotic dream.

Even playing the violin is half about the motion for me. People used to say, "you like computers and music--ever combine them?" but it's the visceral sense of playing the violin that I love more than anything. The violin comes alive under my fingers, the sound literally goes into my bones. It changes me as I breathe in and send my air through the strings. What is music but motion between notes, the limitless number of ways to get from one note to the next?

And tango. Perfect motion to music, with a partner, is better than almost anything. But so much of it depends on the partner, and it's very seldom that I have a really lovely dance. That kind of motion transcends normal movement--I know my legs are moving, my feet are moving, but it feels like one of my flying dreams when I'm just floating, with no association between my feet on the floor and the rest of me. These days I sometimes get that feeling playing the violin, too, and that requires no partner. Maybe that's why I've been staying home practicing instead of going out dancing.

Real people in motion are so much better than any photograph for me. Photographs fix someone in my mind in a way I don't like; I don't want to remember a photograph, which is too easy to do. I want to relive the moment when we got sick from laughing too hard or stepped in the wasps' nest or first danced at a milonga or just lay together breathing. Which is why I'm sitting around thinking about the Internet and flickr and match.com and blogs and communication and getting all tangled up in what I think is important and "real".

I also think about MS and about being motionless again, in body or in mind, and wonder whether I'll eat these words in 5 or 10 years.