…especially when it’s a literal pit. No, I suppose you shouldn’t fall into a pit of despair or the kind the enemy lays for you when he wants to cause you to sin, either. But there are real ones covering this topographic earth. And sometimes, the pits that harm the physical body might cause the figurative ones to surface, as well.
My life is composed of blocks that can be shifted as I go about my week. This is the life of a contract and freelance laborer. I go where the work is when it’s presented to me. At the same time, I have a list of important life goals I’ve given myself: I must exercise, study languages (mostly Spanish), play the accordion, write and edit books. I have short blocks in the day dedicated to these activities that I move around my other work. This forces me to be flexible and to never stop moving — stagnation is the dirtiest of all dirty words.
However, you can imagine that doing activities by rote in a prescribed time frame can cause stagnation. You see, I’m happy merely to get my activities done and mark it off the checklist. That is its own kind of stagnation, which doesn’t inspire me. I want — nay, need — creativity and purpose in my existence. Don’t we all? I have to admit that I’ve lost a certain amount of joy in my accordion playing due to forcing it into its prescribed box each day. There is definitely a balance that has to be achieved regarding creative work. Without the daily effort, creativity has no defined parameters. With the daily effort, it often ceases to be creative.
Yesterday, after finishing my last tutoring session at six, I came home and strapped on the accordion and duly tried to play one of my favorite songs, Mi Cómplice by Cardenales de Nuevo León. I hit wrong notes. I stopped and backed up. I played it from the beginning chords over and over. It was getting frustrating. And then, just when it began to flow better, my timer went off. My accordion time was over, and I still had to walk the dog and serve dinner — I had put in a crockpot pork tenderloin earlier, but I knew my family would wait for me to call them to dinner before they started eating.
With much frustration in my heart, I put the leash on my elderly dog, while apologizing profusely to the puppies. I’m simply not capable of taking all three for a walk at one time. The puppies only get walks when I have at least one other person to help me. But even when I have an extra person around to take hold of the elderly dog’s leash, walking both of them at one time is like being pulled by a hundred pounds of pure puppy muscle; it’s not easy. It’s a great workout for the core stability muscles, though. Alas, a great workout was not going to happen that day, as there was no one available to help.
And that last bit went way off the subject… Point being, I have to give at least my elderly darling her walk, or she will sulk. To regain the magic of accordion, I played Mi Cómplice on my phone. It’s always good to remind myself of what inspired me to want to play the accordion in the first place. I set off, marching to the beat* and thinking only of the finish line. I didn’t want to go for my relaxing walk; I just wanted to check it off my list and please my dog.
That’s when I fell in the pit…the literal pit in the park I like to walk in. I already know the poorly maintained parks of Roswell have holes, but with the darkening air and my preoccupation, I fell right in one, my ankle twisted, my glasses, phone, and dog suddenly scattered across the park. After the shock wore off, I said a few choice words and gathered myself together again. My phone had jumped to a Ramón Ayala song after landing with a thud — ah, my original inspiration for the accordion. I might have felt more pain if I hadn’t instead felt completely ridiculous.
I think the message in this post is — Jill scratches her head — to pay attention to the current moment? Or perhaps it’s to not treat life as a checklist because true enjoyment, like falling into holes, is around every sunset corner you round. Oh, yeah, it had something to do with the snares of sin and mumbling choice words when I fall, not to mention despairing over the long walk home. Whatever way you look at it, my ankle is throbbing today, though it didn’t prevent me from trying to fill my exercise block. And I already filled the Mi Cómplice spot and perhaps played it a little better than yesterday.
*If you want to see what marching to the beat means, you’ll have to watch the video and mira al hombre que está bailando con un palito. Seriously, though, the first time I watched this video I laughed so hard with pure delight that ese hombre does nothing but dance on beat with a stick. Apparently, that was his role in the band. I love his smile. Infectious.
Jill Domschot 