A minute ago it was snowing hard, big flakey flakes of wet snow thundering down like paparazzi at an Oscars party wardrobe malfunction, if paparazzi moved vertically. Now they’re smaller, and less numerous.

The snow, I mean the snow.

Recently, I’ve done a couple things right. I won’t say what, other people are involved. So there’s that.

Had a couple problems with technology, nothing serious. Put my cellphone in my pocket in such a way that I sent 18 text messages to someone on my list, who did not recognize my phone number and gave me a nasty call until we figured out what must be happening. Then I sent an email to a wrong address, thanks to the gmail auto-complete function, which worked out okay because it turned out to be someone I hadn’t heard from in a long time and we had a nice exchange. I’ve heard stories of people with worse luck, who accidentally call a friend behind whose back they happen to be talking with another friend, for example. A model I knew told me about a painter who took a call from his wife once, while painting my model acquaintance, spoke to his wife, then put the phone back into his pocket, assuming he had turned it off, and went back to trying to seduce the model while his wife listened in on their conversation, for around two hours.

Had a cello lesson last night. It went okay. Some romantic sonata by Romberg. It’s easier than the Vivaldi thing I had been trying before that. Less work with the left hand, lets me concentrate on my bowing, which needs concentration, man, in my case.

So I guess practicing? It helps? Also I was thinking about Ruth‘s comment on an earlier post, about Gamma being a good cello teacher with her “alles is lebendig” and I was thinking about that, and how, if my cello is alive in any way, then it wants to be played, and well, and not dropped or to have metronomes fall on it or to be stood in a corner.

So there’s that.

Meditating this morning, I tried this thing, this metta thing, where you start out seeing yourself in a loving way, as a good friend would see you, and then thinking about a friend in that way, then a stranger, then an enemy. This is going to take several days to get through, I think. This morning, I sat down, the cat jumped on my lap as he has begun doing every morning, I got as far as thinking about myself as a friend would, but found myself unable, in fact, to imagine why anyone would like me and stood at the rim of that abyss for a while, looking down, with the wind blowing up through my hair, currently short, my hair, a neutral wind, not warm, not chilly, sort of looking down and not seeing anything and thinking, oh for pete’s sake, people like me, they must have a reason.

So I pet the cat for a while and made lunches and stuff.

Saw some neat collage stuff on flickr, people jazzing up their moleskine journals. Coincidentally, I have begun glueing stuff into mine. So far, only postits with half-checked-off todo lists, but it’s a start.

Making coffee this morning, it occurred to me that it’s been 20 years, actually only 19, since I worked in the same office as another American.

Checking my stats, I noticed a stranger had linked one of my Painsuit stories, an old story, and it was quite good, reading through it. That was encouraging.

I am very busy at work. At lunch I will go outside, into the snowy streets, at least I hope they’ll still be snowy, and walk around for half an hour or so.