There is an awful lot of reinventing the wheel every time I am faced with a new practice or musical problem.  While it may be a more complicated and artistic wheel that I am fashioning, it is still, too often, a new wheel.

This frustrates me, that I might still have so many holes to fill, things to learn, places to grow.  At some point, I want to be on top of my game, full of the knowledge that I know what I am doing.  Just the other day, I played a four-hand concert on an unfamiliar piano.  My partner and I had meant to get there early enough to run through a few things on the instrument, but the recital took place in an assisted living center, and even an hour before it was to begin, the place was beginning to fill up.  This was hardly a high-pressure event, so I didn't think much about the fact that we had to forfeit our pre-recital rehearsal.  But when we went to play, the piano was dead and every musical line took immense amount of work to project.  The pedal laid limp and non-responsive under my foot–it was either on or off, no subtleties available.  I spent the first few selections on the program just trying to figure out how to survive on this instrument for the next hour, at the expense of many a note and musical nuance.  I would have played better had I known what I was getting into.  I know this.  I know this now.

Even when I manage the details like trying out the instrument before a performance, there are still too many things in every performance that I wish I knew before I go out on stage.  Last night, I played a recital with a flutist.  I knew going in that I needed more rehearsal time on one of the pieces with complicated, syncopated rhythms.  I knew that I could either communicate my insecurity or fake it.  I chose the latter.  The performance went fine–it was exciting and the audience loved the piece, but later that night mulling over the music, I realized with sudden clarity what I needed do to get those rhythms in my bones better.  It was so easy, so obvious, yet not to me until I had already sweated through one performance of the work. I am too often figuring out what I need as a pianist, musician, performer, later than I wish.  While I don't want to become someone who thinks they have nothing left to learn, I wish I didn't have so much left to discover.

In spite of the notes I scribble to myself, hoping for a blueprint to use for the next big recital, challenging student, or practice problem, most of the time I am forced to figure it out from scratch.  I wonder if this will always be the case.

Recently we went to Dallas for a long weekend. Matt had a gig and we used the excuse to go back to our old stomping grounds in and around Fort Worth. After a weekend of visiting friends, the last afternoon we spent in our old neighborhood in the arts district of Fort Worth, eating lunch at a favorite restaurant and spending several hours at the Kimball Art Museum. I spent countless hours at the Kimball when we lived a couple of blocks away, and the small collection is imprinted on my mind. Returning, I felt like I was visiting old friends, so dear and familiar those pieces of art are to me. I realized, however, as I wandered the rooms of that beautiful museum that I have changed since the last time I was there. I know more about art in general and many of these artists in particular than I did back then. While these old friends had been there all along hanging out and waiting for me to return, this trip I could see them through new eyes, from a new altitude on the spiral of learning and life's experiences.

Thinking about this, I realized that in spite of all the days I think I am stuck in patterns of my own making, this trip allowed me the gift of seeing clearly the distance between the person I was when I lived there and the person life has shaped me into being today. I felt like I could almost pass that other person on the street. I'd like to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her, except I remember she doesn't drink coffee. I smile at that thought. At the very least, life might have been easier for her in those days with more caffeine.

In the strangest way, this trip gave me tangible hope. Hope that for all the deep ruts I manage to dig for myself on a daily basis, there is evidence that I am somewhere psychologically, intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually that I didn't used to be. In a few weeks I will celebrate another birthday. Some people ignore birthdays, trying to deny the aging process. My mother always says she'd be 25 again in a heartbeat. I shudder at the thought: give up all these things I have earned and learned over the years? Never!

And so, today I raise my coffee cup to that younger version of this self I am becoming. And to Cezanne's Man with a Blue Smock, still hanging in the Kimball.

Katie is five.  She loves my cats, and sees lessons at my house as a reason to come visit them.   One week her grandparents brought her to her lesson.  After Katie's lesson, she asked me, "Miss Amy, can I go find Godiva?"   "Is Godiva a dog or a cat?"  her grandmother asked. "Godiva is a Godiva," Katie responded and scampered out of the room.

Nicely put.  Godiva is a Godiva.  I'm tired of categories and labels that don't begin to describe me, and trying to fit into someone else's narrow definition of who I might be.  I spend too much of my life hiding behind a bio that doesn't begin to encompass what I really care about or believe in, doesn't mention my two cats or my 15 blooming rose bushes I coaxed into life this spring.  I don't want to be written off after being labeled:  Amy.  Pianist.  Writer.  Teacher.  "Ok, got it," I can almost hear others thinking, No!  You can't begin to get me, or I, you.  Can we begin again?   I want to say.  Godiva is a Godiva.

Yesterday I was making dark chocolate mousse.  I had just gotten out of the china cabinet four pieces of stemware to pour the dessert into and was busy in the kitchen distributing the chocolaty goodness into each glass.  Matt was sitting at the dining room table reading out loud to me.  Suddenly, I heard Matt yell, "Godiva!"  and then Crash!   Godiva and half the glasses from the cabinet came spilling out onto the floor, the glasses splintering into a million pieces, Godiva safe, but scared and running for cover.

I wish I could say this was the first time that I had left a cabinet door open, but alas!  I have left doors open behind me all my life.  My father told my soon-to-be husband on the night of our rehearsal dinner that now he could go through life shutting the doors I leave behind in my wake.  I wish I could say this was the first time Godiva had gotten into the china cabinet or a cabinet in general, but she knows my bad habits all too well and looks for opportunities to explore in otherwise off-limit territories.  I have caught her in the china cabinet numerous times, standing in the glasses–one paw in each glass.  I have learned that she can untangle herself just fine from this predicament and land gracefully without breaking a single glass.  I only wish I had such grace to get out of the messes I find myself.

But clearly yesterday, Matt startled her, ruining her otherwise perfect record.  I can hardly fault him, knowing that I, too, in seeing her standing among our beautiful stemware, would have tried to get Godiva out rather than let her figure it out.  It's hard to trust a cat, for they give us plenty of reasons not to on a daily basis.

We spent some time cleaning up the broken glass.  There are slivers of glass still lodged in the crevices of the cabinet and waiting on the wooden floor for us to step on them weeks from now.  "How many glasses do you think she took out?"  Matt asked me.  "I don't know.  Ten?  Twelve? Fifteen?"  From the other room, Godiva watched us warily.  I'd like to think she learned a lesson and that I'll never find her in the china cabinet again, but I fear neither one of us will change our behavior.  I'm certain to leave doors open behind me; Godiva will follow with the hope of getting into some small space previously unavailable to her.  Probably only Matt will do something different next time, and leave Godiva alone to her own troubles.

The irony is that just as this disaster took place, Matt was reading to me an article about how scientists think that all the housecats in the world are descended from five wild cats that at some point decided to domesticate themselves.  Godiva is so domesticated that she was trying to get a wine glass down so she could have a drink.

Several months ago I took a lesson from a friend who is a retired piano professor from an east coast university.  I meet with Mike occasionally when I am working on music that needs help, or at the very least, another set of ears.  After listening for attentively, Mike had one general comment: "I think you have made all your pieces too complicated."  Thinking this over for the next several days, I found myself wondering how that comment might be applied to the other areas of my life.  I think I have made lots of things too complicated, searching for meaning where none might exist.   The irony is that I value simplicity.  I often ask myself how much simpler I could make this problem, this teaching goal, that recipe.  I have been repeatedly dismayed by how much more complicated my life has been since taking on a house and two cats, however much joy those things might give me.  With extra beating hearts and possessions to maintain, my chore list increases exponentially.  These days I am particularly wistful for the past: for the simplicity of a tiny apartment and fewer demands.  Most times I think I couldn't go back and give all this up:  the two adoring felines, the yard and rose beds, the house with enough space to spread out and grow.  But sometimes, and recently with increased fervor, I wonder if I didn't know how good I had it:  my possessions and needs staying simple from the reality of living in small, cramped living quarters, my garden and backyard the public gardens of the city, the only demands on my mornings being a cup of coffee and a good book–not cats needing to be fed and watered or a house to open up and ready for the day ahead.

Generally, I am good at keeping things simple, filling my hours with only the biggest and most important concerns:  teaching, practicing, writing, Matt.  I can live for days and weeks in my house with blinders on, not really noticing the dishes in the sink or the pile of clothes sitting on the bedroom chair.  I get a great deal accomplished, mostly because I focus on the most pressing demands on my time, but look deeper and the picture gets fuzzy.  I am a questionable housekeeper.  I go weeks without speaking to friends or returning personal phone calls.  I put off haircuts until I'm embarrassed by how shaggy I look.

While I am immediately suspicious of any activity that requires lots of equipment, any recipe with too many steps, any hobby that makes me buy a lot of new stuff, I am not always the best judge of when enough is enough.  I recently accepted yet another set of china from moving friends.  That makes four sets of dishes for these imaginary dinner parties that I may throw.  I find myself buying more black t-shirts, pants and skirts when I already have more than enough.  I forget to ask myself if I own something already that may serve my purpose when faced with a potential purchase.  I am immediately nervous by empty time in my schedule and all too quickly fill it with random activities that just might be unnecessary.  I spend too much time getting organized to get organized instead of just doing the thing I need to do.  The maintenance of the people, activities and things in my life sometimes leaves me no room for the people, activities and things in my life.

This weekend's list of chores is telling enough:  Thursday night we went to the grocery store, Friday afternoon I did several loads of laundry, Saturday was spent watering indoor and outdoor plants, bagging leaves, replanting a rose bush, pruning overgrown and misshapen plants, weeding, polishing boots to pack away for the winter, polishing Matt's dress shoes, getting out the first of several boxes of summer sandals and clothes, making green chile stew, shaking out throw rugs and hanging out to air, vacuuming, brushing the cats, feeding the cats, cleaning the litter box, unloading the dishwasher, filling the dishwasher, and changing the sheets on the bed.  I am sure I left out many things.  I don't mind any of these chores, but I do mind their prominence in my life and my weekend.  I mind that I spend entire days off cleaning and ordering my world so I can go back to work on Monday.  I mind that the maintenance of my possessions gets more priority than the maintenance of my relationships.  I don't feel sorry for myself, I have a dominant domestic gene and I know it, I have a husband who helps and does more than his share of errands and chores.  I also know that much of this can't be avoided unless I am to acquire a housekeeper, gardener, cook and wife.  However, I wonder if just the sheer number of household chores would ever make me think twice about buying another pair of shoes to polish, taking on another plant to water, accepting another set of china.  I'd like to think so.

I am hardly alone.  We can too often fall in the trap of spending more time fussing with our stuff than enjoying it.  We frequently spend more time in our cars getting somewhere than we spend at our destination.  We waste countless hours shuffling through more information via the Internet, mail and phone message machine than we could ever process.  There are a million ways of trimming the excess from our lives, but from evidence of our overflowing lives, we don't make much effort to cut back.

I receive a magazine called Real Simple, which when Matt isn't busy reading, he reminds me I wouldn't need if I was really simple.  True enough.  It is a beautiful magazine and one I enjoy for its aesthetic value, but sometimes I find myself thinking, "This is real simple for the people with a real lot of money."    The "solution" list provides answers for problems I have never had, like how to organize my DVD's more attractively.  (What DVD's?) But my superiority can only go so far I know, burdened as I now am with more dishes than Crate and Barrel.

I long for a simple, beautiful life.  A life not cheap or poor, but rather beautiful and pared down to the essentials that I so love: art, music, food, friends, family, instead of full of shuffling and fussing over belongings and relationships.  During Lent every year I practice the ritual of giving things up:  chocolate, wine, sugar.  But I wonder how many things and activities, how much baggage I would have to give up before I saw my life significantly change.  After all, these are all habits, every one.  My yoga teacher reminds me of this when she tells us that even the gripping patterns in our muscles are just habits and can be unlearned and retrained over time.  Steeped in American culture, my habits are telling enough:  the habits of spending when I don't need to, the habits of thinking all free time should be full and overflowing with activities, the habit of feeling the need to escape and go on a trip instead of sitting quietly and facing down my life, as it is.  If I have been lately trying to establish the good habits that serve me well, it might equally do me good to rid myself of a few that don't add and only complicate an already messy life.

I want to rid my life of the unnecessary stuff, my music of the superfluous gestures, my habits of the tired patterns.  In the meantime, I am starting simply:  I want to read the Desert Fathers; I need to recycle not only my glass and tin cans, but my wardrobe for another season; I plan to spend an afternoon writing a letter to an old favorite friend.  It may not change the world, or even my life, but it does in a small quiet way, change today.