Next Ten Years

What is up the Universe’s sleeve I wonder.

Not that anything other than the next action in front of me is ever revealed, it’s entertaining nonetheless to let myself ponder it.

I suspect that there will be more travelling.

I want to go down soon to Chula Vista and see my grandmother, it’s been really too long.

I want to go to Atlanta in July.

Yeah, I know, that’s like, um going to Anchorage in December, but hey, when an international group of like-minded fellows decides to be in a certain place at a certain time, then, well, I’lll see you in Atlanta in July.

Outside of that, further down the line, another trip or three to Paris.

I just got the bug man, I don’t suppose I ever will get rid of it.

I’m currently listening to Edger Meyer playing a double bass cello to Bach Cello Suite #2 in D Minor and while I was in the shower I saw myself in front of the window of the luthier in Paris on the Left Bank near Shakespeare and Company.

I saw myself walk in and ask, “combien sa coute?”

How much does that cost?

Of course I would add s’il vous plait to that request and then I see myself touch the caramel color wood of the front breast of the cello and smell the rosin and I am handed a horse hair bow and invited to sit and see how I like her sound.

It’s a fantasy, yes, but stranger things have happened.

In the next decade I propose that I will be picking up the cello again, actually I see that happening sooner rather than later.

I was googling Roland Feller today at work while the littlest guy napped.

Member, Entente Internationald des Maitres Luthiers et Archetiers d’Art.

Member of the American Federation of Violin and bow Makers.

Roland Feller is a luthier here in the city that a friend who works at the Burning Man offices took me to one fine day about 8 years ago.

He had been lending me his cello, he plays out and has more than one cello, I wasn’t using his orchestra cello, but it was still nice.

He wanted me to see what a real luthier looked like and took me to Feller’s atelier in the NOPA.

Unless you know what you are looking for you would miss it.

It is a second story shop in a grey nondescript house squeezed in between the Popeye’s on Divisadero and a mom and pop grocery/liquor mart.

There’s a heavy metal gate and a dirty ATM in the base door way of the stairs.

There’s a camera mounted to the top of the stairs and you buzz to get in.

The gate swings out and open and one climbs the rickety worn carpeted stairs and arises into stringed instrument heaven.

The smell.

Oh.

The cellos.

I noticed other instruments, sure, I did, but the cellos were so stupendous and bright, lustrous, enraptured with late afternoon light and gold glowing wood.

My soul felt soothed and I felt not enough all at the same time.

I also recall feeling wildly jealous of a family with a young daughter who was picking out her first full size cello.

She’d grown into the big girl size.

I think I am ready to do the same.

This is not like surfing to me, I’m not interested in finding a guy to teach me so that I can go on a date with him.

This is not like downloading all the Muddy Waters albums because you danced with me to Hoochie Coochie Man in the soft light of my room.

This is not like playing frisbee golf in the snow because your my man.

Nope.

This is a desire and passion all my own.

And since I am not being quiet about my passions and desires, I desire to get myself to the luthier’s.

“Doll, instead of putting more ink on that beautiful skin of yours, why don’t you invest in a cello?”  He said to me over the table at the cafe.

I looked him straight in his blue eyes and said, “I have $1800 in my savings account, I could go get one this weekend.”

Granted, I probably won’t.

I have plans.

And the tattoo is part of them.

Unless something ridiculous like a meteor of cocaine hits my house and smashes itself up my nose and somebody ties me down and pours a beer into my mouth, I’ll be ten in three hours and I am going to get that tattoo.

But, he was right, my cafe confidant, I do need to get a cello in my life.

Where I will squeeze it in?

Who knows.

But squeeze I will.

A minute here.

An hour there.

Oh.

To sit in the sea salt air in the sunshine on my back porch and practice the Bach preludes.

Oh.

Now that would be something else.

I had been planning on saving that money for a new laptop and I will still need to get one before graduate school starts.

Oh yeah, that’s going to happen.

Whether I get into this program or I do another, I see a Master’s degree in my next ten years.

Abso-fucking-lutely do.

It’s a few months off, fall of 2015, so I think I could look into getting a little cello action in my life for sure.

Besides, when you say yes to the Universe, it takes a 1,000 steps toward you.

I am saying yes to playing cello.

Yes to more travel.

Yes to graduate school.

Yes to staying sober.

Yes to service.

Yes to love.

All love.

There is so much life to live for me yet.

I am so young and so ready to keep moving forward.

I am so overwhelmed with gratitude and the deep and knowing knowledge that my life is really just starting to bloom.

All that work, all the shit, er fertilizer, has finally kicked in.

Life is miraculous.

I am stunning proof.

Tags: cello, decade, insight, love, luthier, memory, Paris, postaday, Roland Feller, San Francisco, sober, sobriety, travel, writing