You’ve changed, my mother told me a few years back…

And I don’t think she meant in a good way. Perhaps she detected some ossification of traits she had wished would go away. Or, she suddenly saw parallels between the adult (more than just adult by now!) daughter and other adult members of the family she wasn’t especially fond of at the time. Quite likely.

I saw hope in that statement. For after all, doesn’t it mean we are capable of change? Regardless of how others judge the direction of it, isn’t it a sign that, with a little twitching, we can actually steer ourselves in a desirable (in our view) direction?

Last night proved that my mom was wrong and so my bubble of hope for a different, better me popped, making puddles of wistful thinking about how I could some day be a person who actually does what she sets out to do.

Because last night, I did what I had done for years and years back in high school, when I was, I thought, less “mature” and “disciplined.” What I did was simple: I stretched out on the floor, leaned against the foot of the couch, took out my guitar and played my Russian ballads. With some Polish odes thrown in. For hours I was there, with my guitar, letting that plunk and warble flow.

Sorry, mom. Once a guitar-playing wallower always a guitar-playing wallower. All that self-improvement I put aside in high school in favor of this rather fainéant activity? It was never meant to be. Some people industriously apply themselves to mastering the next level of whatever intellectual task or project they have undertaken in life and I think nothing of letting three hours slip humming about the sadness of never seeing Alexander Sergeiev Pushkin*, only to move slowly, wistfully into a poetic little tribute to summer.**

(with apologies for the roughness of my translations)

* What was once, will never return, it’s pointless to feel anguished about it,
Every era has its order, its beauty,
And yet I am saddened, that in this doorway, Pushkin will never appear,
I so crave, if only for a short moment, to sit down over a cognac with him.
(from the Russian poet, Bulat Okudzawa)

** Grasshoppers ran before me in a gallop
From underneath their hooves, flowers burst into bloom
Frogs in ponds lit fires of sound
In the sky the moon set flames of light to stars…
(the imagery in this song is Polish through and through)