Alan's Disco Taxi.

As I walked home from a movie tonight--and yes, it is true that I skipped a chamber music concert so that I could see Juno before it closes at the local art cinema--I passed the city centre's taxi rank, one of whose waiting taxicabs was labeled Alan's Disco Taxi. During the rest of my walk (and even through my pause at the blissfully quiet grocery store), I mused on this find and came to a decision:

Alan's Disco Taxi will be my writing chariot.

The weather here has scudded back to such warm early spring bluster that once I was walking tonight, I could have kept on walking--but for the fact that it was 9:30. Tomorrow, I will get an excellently long walk because I will be resuming my piano lessons after a gap of several weeks (occasioned by my teacher's being out of town). Lessons continue to be a test of my ability to accept not having the time to master everything. On any given day, I'm doing at least two or three of the following: photographing, reading, writing, and practicing the piano. What this has meant is that the Bach on which I'm working can only come along slowly, and my Schumann still has the same broken and awkward measure that it had in late January. It is hard for me to move myself past worrying that I will have disappointed my teacher by not having practiced more. The pieces are better than they were, and that has to be enough for now.

Via that magic medium known as the videochat, I introduced the littlest Lexingtonian to the concept of seafood this evening as I ate my toast and honey. "Do you like seafood?" I asked, waiting a moment before showing off my mouthful of toast (even adventuresomely wagging my tongue). Her eyes widened, and then she grinned and did the whole-face blink of delight that she's started doing lately. Soon we were both pitching about in our laughter.

In a week where most of my immediately proximate relationships have suddenly felt both unnecessarily complicated and incredibly superficial--in the sense of their having barely scratched the skin of who I actually am in the world--being able to laugh and play peekaboo and clap with a nine-month-old who lives halfway around the world has suddenly become so much more important than ever before, as has being carried around the house by her mother just so that we can keep hanging out as she goes about her evening.

Tomorrow I'll take Alan's Disco Taxi for a spin and watch my word count mount.

[A postscript, two days later: Um, maybe Alan's Disco Taxi isn't my writing chariot.]