the stars...the moon...they have all been blown out...

..and I am left in the dark, here in my new writing/cello/knitting room, but moreso because the walls and ceiling are painted dark blue than because there was a short circuit in the heavens caused by someone leaving someone else and a song being written about it and played with really loud drums. (Great song by the way, especially with the volume turned up. Great album, too, come to that. She gives me the urge to dye my hair bright red.)

This room used to be a nursery, and there is a moon and stars mural painted on the walls, like so:

The mural drifts across the top of all four walls. My astronomy is a little rusty, but I believe the dots on the ceiling are meant to resemble actual constellations. Groups of them look like constellations, anyway.

It's a tiny room, and too small for a guest room, so it's become a creativity room instead. For the first time in my life, I have a whole room devoted to nothing but creative stuff. I'm already spending a lot of time in here writing and sawing away on my cello. It's a cozy knitting space, too, especially while listening to audiobooks (just downloaded Brian Greene's latest book through the local library, along with American Bloomsbury, which is about the writers living in and around Concord, Massachusetts between the 1840s and 1880s - Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller).

The biggest revelation for me in this room is that since I don't have downstairs neighbors anymore and since the walls of this room don't share common walls with my new neighbors, I can play my cello whenever I damn well please. I hope my timidity and embarrassed self-consciousness while playing will decrease and my volume and practice hours (and hopefully, skill) will increase as a result of this new-found playing freedom.

I think the moon and stars mural will stay up for awhile. I like it. It seems to me that when you have the moon and stars in your very own creative room, pretty much anything is possible, don't you think? Oscar Wilde did (..."with freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, [and cello and knitting], who could not be happy?").

childhood comfort

I always think of Narnia whenever I see a lampost in the snow.

This one is just outside my front door and a few steps down the path. Granted, it's not as impressive as some people's lampposts, but it'll do nicely for me.

I think Aslan is sniffing around down by the frozen creek (you can see a bit of it where the tree is bending its elbow and toward the left). I'm hoping he'll ask the fairies if it would be okay for me to bury Hunny's and Louise's ashes down there when the ground softens again.

I wonder if he'd like to come in for tea.

Would it be rude to ask him to wipe his paws on the doormat first?

new nest

There's one thing I've figured out about resolutions and goals - you are more likely to accomplish them if they are less things you should do and more things you want to do (I've probably said this in a previous resolutions/revolutions post - the "don't should on yourself" philosophy). This goal-setting method has worked well for me for the past few years, so I'm using it again this year.

The first couple of months of this year will be all about leaving the old nest and settling into the new one. (Treehouse. Tree. Nest. Get it? I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. Couldn't resist.) New red couches will be involved. I'm not a red person, unless it's a deep raspberry or purple red, but every time I look at what will be my new living room, all I can picture in it are red couches. No idea why, but I'm going with it.

Also, new bookcases, seeing as I can't take the built-ins from my condo with me. More's the pity. But there will be a wall of bookcases in the new nest, and a big red chair in front of them.

I'm also going to learn to garden. I have a front garden and a patio on the side of the house. At settlement on Thursday, the previous owners gave me a map of the front garden. I thought that was very nice of them. Now I at least know what's there (I have rose bushes! And hydrangeas! And astilbe and hosta! [whatever they might be]), so I don't have to waste time figuring that out, and I can research how to take care of each thing. The side patio will be for container gardening - finally, my own veggies and herbs!

I will get Eidolon House up on all the e-reader platforms. I shopped it around to agents for a year with no luck, so it's time to release it into the world in another way.

I will finish revising the next book, The Phoenix Sonata, and get it e-pubbed as well.

I will finish at least one of the children's novels I've written and do some research on e-pubbing children's stories. Are kids using e-readers?

I will outline the novel I will write for NaNoWriMo 2011. I didn't participate last year since November was my month of house buying and selling and showing and paper signing. A novel drafted at the end of 2011 means a third novel epubbed in 2012.

I will learn the entire prelude to Bach's First Suite for solo cello (meaning, I will imperfectly but valiantly attempt to stumble through it at written speed and with the printed bowings). Emily got me started on it last year, and I practice a measure or two of it at each practice session. I'm not playing at speed yet, and I'm still playing it with separate bowings. I'm focusing on getting the left hand fingers to not trip over each other. This piece is a real finger workout! And I am a slow learner. This is quite possibly too ambitious a goal. We shall see.

I will work on vibrato. I've learned the mechanics of it, and I get the concept, but I'm not able to do it yet - see slow learner above.

It's looking like it will be quite the creative year.

'scuse me, but I have more packing to do.