my heart is a glorious machine;

At work today I was informed by my co-worker (male, twenty-five) that I need to cut loose more often. Apparently this is because my two-week holiday with my family next month will not involve drinking, partying, and picking up strange men in bars. "Getting drunk isn't my idea of fun at all," I said. "Hangovers are really not my idea of fun." He kind of looked at me and protested, "Don't knock it till you try it!" Uh, thanks, co-worker, but no thank you. (Disclaimer: very much not a teetotaller. If it weren't illegal, what with me being not quite nineteen, I would probably have a glass of -- very fruity and girly -- wine fairly often.) But seriously, I have no desire to lose all of my inhibitions and do things I would be justifiably embarrassed about later, possibly even ashamed of, not to mention putting myself in danger. Also, hangover. No-one enjoys a hangover. Why not just avoid them altogether by being responsible with the drink? Also, strange men in bars? Yuck.

But -- seriously? I am uptight? I need to cut loose? I mean... no one has ever said this to me before. Ever. And when I told my parents they laughed even harder than I had.

In other news, I persuaded a girl to buy a copy of A Countess Below Stairs. Hurrah! Also need to write post for book blog BUT WHAT ABOUT.

...To talk about my summer plans? 

I realised just now that I haven't actually written about them yet, and some of the more pertinent ones are approaching rather quickly. In about a week, Dad and I leave for Merlefest in North Carolina, where it will be gloriously warm... oh, right, and the music, yes. We won two free tickets to the festival last year, from a radio call-in, and really, really loved it -- not only the music, because clearly, it's one of the biggest folk/roots/bluegrass festivals in the country, and nearly everyone good ends up there sooner or later, but because of the atmosphere of it, the locations of the stages -- two are at the bottoms of hills, making for spectacular natural stadium seating! -- the community spirit, the wonderful people who run it, who strictly encourage a family friendly and comfortable atmosphere, the beautiful weather of North Carolina in springtime. Summer would be miserable for me (although I survived physical labour in Mississippi in July, so perhaps I'm hardier in the face of humidity than I give myself credit for), but spring is delicious. I've been daydreaming about it for months, all through the miserable chilly wet grey cloud-heavy winter, dreaming about lying flat in the long grass underneath the afternoon sun, listening to Emmylou Harris. (Emmylou, you guys! EMMYLOU HARRIS. And the Duhks, and Missy Raines & the New Hip, and Ollabelle, and the Greencards, and... wow.)

For me, summer is folk music festivals. Of course this is April, but April in the Carolinas is summer enough by my standards, and by the time May rolls around spring and summer tend to blend into each other anyway. But since I was nine, we've been making pilgrimages to various festivals every summer, and I feel so tremendously at home -- almost at peace, in a way, when I come to another festival; it's almost the same sort of violently familiar and safe feeling that finds me at my grandparents' house, even their new little apartment in a retirement community, because it's full of the pictures and artifacts and furniture and photographs and refridgerator magnets and particular snacks that I remember. Perhaps it's even stronger at festivals because it's music, and the music sometimes takes me further back than the festival experience alone. Emmylou Harris, for example -- she's been crooning to me since I was a baby. There are certain songs that bring back that -- safeness -- and her voice alone relaxes me, and yet makes me ache with remembering.

And festivals are fun. Music, all day! And sunlight, and people, and booths full of delightful oddities, and dancing, and good food, and all of the excitingness that long drives and camping bring (...look, I really like car trips, okay? I don't even know why, I just love them).

And then four days after Dad and I get home from North Carolina, I'm getting on a plane and flying to Kyra.

Pretty much yeah.

So, you remember last summer, lady_moriel came to stay with me for a week? And how we've known each other for like seven years and had never met in person until then? And how it was pretty much the most amazing thing ever? (And how glorious and strange it was, how incredibly familiar she was -- because I've met internet friends before, and there's always that first sense of vertigo, because they're really familiar, except not, because they're occupying physical space, and suddenly they have habits of waving their hands or sitting in a particular way or pacing or being really still and it's just... weird at first? But with Kyra it really wasn't at all, and that was nice.) So, she's graduating from college next month, and after she left we kept saying, we need to do this again, we really really really do, and she thought maybe she could bring me up for her graduation, because she has all of these frequent flyer miles, and... then there was a lot of planning and deciding, and now it's happening. There are tickets, and everything, and I'm going to get on a plane in two weeks and fly all the way to Alaska and watch her graduate and stay with her for a week and a half and I AM SO EXCITED I CAN'T EVEN TELL YOU. I mean, first, PLAAANE -- I love flying, although I've only done it, what, four or five times in my life?, and I love airports, and travelling in general, and all of the weird little things about it, like packing carry-ons and having travel-sized things and snacks and choosing the exact right books and... that sort of thing. And thene KYRAAA. FOR A WEEK AND A HALF. (Also, ALASKA. Have never been there. Have never been off the continental United States, really, unless Quebec counts, in not being the United States but still continental. Anyway.) 

So... yes. Lots of planning going on there. And flailing. And deciding what movies and television to watch together, and planning photoshoots and geekery and things... I HAS A FLAIL. (Not the, um, weapon kind, with the spikes. Really not.)

Then, in July, my family is going to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia -- renting a house, seeing the sights, THERE WILL BE CEILIDHS, real live ones, oh my goodness, this has been a crazy dream of mine for so long, to go to a ceilidh, and I had no expectation of it ever coming true. (Now to make it come true in Ireland...) Aaaannnd, because we're us, we're going to another folk festival out there, the Stan Rogers Folk Music Festival -- we don't know a lot of the artists, as they're mostly Canadian and ergo less well-known over here (although Dad knows and loves James Keelaghan, and some of the artists they've had in previous line-ups kind of made my jaw drap), but... WAIT, SARAH HARMER? WAIT WHAT? SHE WAS NOT ON THE LINE-UP WHEN LAST I CHECKED. Also need to check out Po' Girl, as they seem very much my sort of music. Anyway, it's going to be gorgeous. My aunt is coming along too. I can hardly wait... except there's quite a lot of else to fill up the waiting NOT LEAST STAYING WITH KYRA.

...Which reminds me, I have to start gathering some things for Merlefest... I need sunglasses, and there's a set of feather jewellery I'd like to have (shut up), and I really want a parasol. If I can't get one in time for Merlefest, I at least want one for Stanfest. I've got an old-fashioned sunhat, and plenty of flowy summer dresses, and the first sandals I've owned and liked in about eight years, and a laptop... for which I need a case...

I think that every year in recent times I have been thinking, as one year passes into another, that I am tired. I try to make resolutions, but they tend not to go very well. I hope for every year to be better than the one before it: and in many ways this turns out to be true -- if it's not better, it's deeper, higher -- and yet every better year ends up bearing with it an equal proportion of worseness. This was the year that Kyra stayed with me for a week and we watched Order of the Phoenix late at night on my rooftop, that I spent my birthday in the city falling in love with the skeletons of houses, that I saw Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet play two magical shows, and Patty Griffin & Emmylou Harris & Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller in a grand hall in Pittsburgh, that my hair stopped being its natural colour possibly forever, that I stayed home alone for several days and skywatched and lit candles and had a lot of bacon, that Alessandra and I (and sometimes Caroline, or Sarah, or Hannah, or Victoria) and I jammed up on her narrow bed in the cold and Watched Things and fell in love with various fictional people and learned "Once More, With Feeling" and Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog by heart -- and then Jonathan moved here and we watched Doctor Who and had NaNo parties and there was music, and I came back to the weird neo-traditional folk that seems to be my musical destiny. And ... I played my first gig. Sort of. And moved into a lovely house, after a great deal of angst. And acquired a job, though I wouldn't put that on a list of beautiful things of which this year was made. And I wrote 50,0016 words in a month, almost entirely by accident.

But of course for all of this I had horrifying new depressive lows, spent half the move sobbing in exhaustion, and all sorts of things went wrong and tangley and horrible and I am still sorting them out. I feel closer and further from humanity at large and fiercely, cynically rebellious against capitalism, and I still don't know what I'm doing. Anywhere.

Instead of making resolutions, which tend to be do more be more and stop eating so blasted much when you're depressed, I have to ask myself: what do I want this year? Well: I want to be alive. I want to be alive every minute. I want to be healthy clean through and finished with abandoning projects as soon as I start them because they're too exhausting to finish. I want to stop being defeated, especially by myself. I want to go to college. I want to hear more live music. I want to work a job that I love. I want to have a better idea of what on earth my novel is about. I want to be a better person in relation to other people. I'd also like to buy more books. In hardcover. And experiment with making ice cream. And buy a laptop. And do things myself, instead of hoping that other people will make them happen. (How I wish I had the resolve to make this last an actual resolution!)

Today: I slept in, but not too much, and spent all morning reading fairly intensely, and eating things, like cereal and chocolate pie, and I went to see Dr DiGilarmo, and acquired candy, and lit up the candelabra and listened to The Baroness straight through, as a kind of farewell, and there's a little thin curve of milky moon out the window, over the church spires and beyond the one stark tree, with a little spark of a star below it, and the sky's blue as the deep parts of the ocean. Soon: I am going to welcome the next year over the threshold with friends and foodstuffs and probably games of poker. Now: Mum and I are making calzones. 

I feel as though I ought to say something -- there are a lot of things I ought to say. There are too many things buzzing round and round in my head just now. (It's an anniversary sort of month. A year ago my mother was in the hospital. When I prod in that direction my emotions are still as thick and numb as they were then. I don't know why I find it so difficult to feel anything about that month, about Leandra's birth -- perhaps because there is too much to feel. Perhaps I shut down out of self-defense, only I didn't mean to.)

I've been feeling very oddly disconnected lately, as though I am only skimming the surface of the world. It isn't entirely an unpleasant feeling, but it is a slightly worrying one, when I think about it. I feel like a tangle of contradictions: here, passion and joy and anger are hot within me; here, when it should matter, the nerves have gone numb.

I'm not unhappy. It's -- well, it's a bit like being in a dream, and you try to touch things, to affect things, and your fingers drift straight through the furniture, and when you open your mouth you cannot make a sound.


Alessandra and I are playing the letter game, which is not only grand fun, but I'm actually writing. Of course, when I sat down and had a go at Evangeline again, not much happened. (This is partly because for the life of me I cannot find Evangeline's voice. At least, unlike the majority of my other characters, she seems to have a relatively happy, stable, comfortable family. I was beginning to be worried. But she won't talk. I'm starting to wonder whether or not writing in first person was a good idea. Also I should babble about this more fully later.)