Stacy Horn

These are my friends Barbara and Carolinda from choir (taken Friday night). Barbara has one of the best voices in the choir, and apparently she doesn’t know. It’s such a shame. If I had her voice I’d been in everyone’s face with it every chance I got. (Which is probably why the universe did not give me such a great voice. Ha. You may all thank the universe for sparing you.)

I’ve started learning this very new age-y sounding thing called Mindful Based Stress Reduction. It was developed at the University of Massachusetts by this this guy.

It’s 8 sessions over 8 weeks. I’m learning it from Dr. Myra Weiss. She sent me this Goethe quote which I quite like. It describes one of the few spiritual-type things I have found to be true. It’s like The Secret, but I’m sure some day we will discover the science behind it. I’m skipping the beginning and cutting to the chase.

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

I swear, every time I write a book, or do any big project, everything I need comes along one way or another. I thought I was just incredibly lucky or something. It’s interesting to learn that it’s universal. Or so some people, like Goethe, say. Maybe it’s because once I make up my mind to something I proceed with the idea that I’m going to succeed. I know when I am with someone who is confident about something, I believe them, I buy into whatever they are confident about. So, maybe this confidence influences people and events.

I cried twice during our performance last night. Very hard to sing when your lips are quivering. Our conductor John Maclay really knows to select music. I just get overcome. Singing with the orchestra, John furiously conducting, and Vaughan Williams, who was a master at the swelling emotion thing — one must cry sometimes. My brother Douglas and his wife Robin were there, with their friends Don (who I know, really nice guy) and Lauren. (Oh God, I’m pretty sure her name was Lauren, but all of a sudden I’m not sure. She was great, too.) And Doug took us out for dessert at one of my favorite restaurants, Gotham!

Man. I’m so glad I do this. It’s just such an incredibly life-enhancing thing. I took this test recently which is supposed to tell you your mental age, and I did really well. I’m convinced a big part of the reason is, except for summers, I’m always working on learning some challenging music. John picks difficult pieces, difficult for me anyway, and I pretty much practice every day. Aside from feeling good, I’m sure it must be doing good things for my brain.

Sigh. I can’t believe this season is over. I want to do it again. Those are going to be my words on my death bed. “I want to do it again.”

I love wysteria. We had it at our house in Centerport, LI when I was a kid. This is growing on a building on 13th Street. This is Manhattan!!

Today I’m a little stunned. I finished the last chapter of the book in just a few days. I may decide to go back and do something more with it, but for now I think I can move onto the epilogue.

Can I just say: I’m freaking terrified of this epilogue. Even though I hopefully have already done this with the whole of the book, now I’m supposed to provide some perspective about the subject by whatever I chose to do with this looking back, summing-up, here’s-where-it-all-ended-up chapter. So that’s scary about it. Who am I to provide perspective to a subject I have not spent one day of my life participating in, but only reading about and to some extent, watching? You know, I feel like a criminal profiler who has just spent all this time trying to get into the heads of my killers/scientists. Plus, I’ve got a pile of books and papers that I planned to read first, but I’ve only got a month to work on this, so that’s not going to happen. So, I’m uninformed.

I mean, you see the insanity of it, right? I know from past experience I will manage, but still. How? HOW??

My friend Jonathan just IM’ed me to ask me if I wanted to go see Spiderman this morning. I think that’s how I’ll do it — by going to see Spiderman. That will totally work.

I shower and it’s curly! I may be alone in this but I prefer the curly version.

Ugh. I’m obsessing. I almost wish I hadn’t started. I will never find peace. Stupid, I know, but there it is.

HELP.

Have

to

fill

up

space.

Otherwise these posts line up weird. I wish I knew how to fix that.

Okay, so what do we think?? I think it’s really cute from the front, but the back, I don’t know. He said I would lose the look in the front and it would feel soccer-mom-ish if he cut it more in the back, so what was I going to say? Yes, make look like a soccer mom. Also, my bangs dyed back to my original shade of brown now looks fake! I think it’s because it’s one block of unbroken, unvaried color. I’m going to live with it all a few days and see how I feel.

I do love the cut from the front though. I mean, you can see from this shot how cute it is. (I couldn’t figure out how to take my own picture without the camera in my face. It was like some weird spatial puzzle, or early-onset alzheimers.)