Fiasco

I have been complaining a lot lately to anyone who'll listen.  This is because I have lost an entire year of my life (and a hell of a lot of money) to the settling of my father's estate and the attempt to sell his house.  My hair is falling out from stress, I can't sleep, and I have no heart to play the piano (though I force myself to practice)  I can't handle much of anything beyond getting through the day.

Now, just as it seemed that the buyers were finally getting their shit together, the whole thing falls apart: we find out that they can't get financing. The deal is off, and we are starting from scratch, having lowered the price yet again.  So I am complaining.  It would be better if I tried to lose myself in writing Mentalist fanfiction--I have to rewrite my story based on last Sunday's season premiere.  It's after 1 am and I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I need every dollar I am capable of earning, so I can't take a personal day.

This is not the worst catastrophe in the world--it happens to many homeowners.  But the agony is being extended, with no end in sight.  My childhood home is empty, just the shell of a home, and every time I think about it I get unbearably sad.  Every day I try to distract, distract, distract.  It works up to a point, but the fear of ending up with no retirement money never goes away.

One small ray of light is that I received a royalty check for $411 from Berklee Press.

My book is selling!

Too bad it won't ever reach best-seller proportions...

Up and down and back and forth with the closing

The latest news is that the buyer has been in the hospital (!) for 2 weeks but still wants to close the deal on the house.  The question is, why was his wife also MIA? Why wasn't she taking his calls and why didn't she get back to their real estate agent?

Now I have to wait until their lawyer decides to have the closing.  It will undoubtedly be on a work day, so I will lose income.  I would not have lost any money if it had been the 29th. (Well, $40 for a credited piano lesson, and that's not nothing, but losing a whole day of Berklee teaching would be bad) I am trying to let go of this and enjoy my last few days of freedom from work.  I have done everything I could.  The house is cleared and swept.  The lawn is overgrown, but the estate can't afford $75 every 2 weeks.

I am still feeling as though my father died only recently.  It's because I finally chucked his two foot high pile of bluebooks and other notebooks into the recycling bin, because none of his friends wanted them.  I was throwing the only remaining pieces of his mind away.  My father's remains are literally a pile of dust.  There is no more corporeal Jack Davis.  And if there is a spiritual Jack Davis, he has yet to visit me.  It's very hard to forgive him for what he has put me through with his estate/house.  He actually thought he was making things easier for me.  Well, it would have been easier had he put even half of his gambling money in the bank.  Or saved what was left of his pension each month and paid off his $27,000 loan instead of sticking Joe and me with (as I repeatedly begged him to do.) It's over and done with, and I should let this go, but almost a year following his death it is still causing me terrible anxiety and depression.  If he'd kept up the house and grounds as he should have, we'd have sold the place by now.

And now our hope of selling the house rests with a shoplifter.  Not a convicted felon, or as my lawyer put it, "not public enemy #1."  But someone incredibly irresponsible.  I get a daily headache in the upper right part of my skull.  I almost never have headaches, so I can only conclude that it's the stress I'm under.  When will it end?

What happened?

After 5 months on the market and 30 showings without an offer, my father's house finally got an offer.  We have the signed purchase and sale, the inspection went without a hitch, and I busted my ass cleaning the house out mostly by myself with some help from Tasha and Curtiss.  I didn't get rid of all the books and records until 2 days ago.

Despite numerous calls to both agent and lawyer, I have been unable to find out when and where the closing will take place.  We had a date--Aug. 29--on the contract, but no one has been able to reach the buyers.  The agent told me this evening that the buyer's realtor has been trying to reach him for 2 weeks and leaving messages, none of which resulted in a call or email back.  I can't think of a good reason for this.  Why would they go the distance and then run away from the deal?

Curtiss did some research on the buyer online and made a shocking discovery:  a young man with the same name as the buyer (and who lives in Conn.) was arrested for sixth degree larceny in 2011 for attempting to steal an air conditioner from a store.  I know that real estate agents can't vet their buyers, but how could this happen?  Our house was under agreement with a criminal?  The name is not a common one and it must be the same person.

The only reason I can think of that he has not been answering his calls is that he's on the run from the police.  Could this get any worse?

I sent a link to the newspaper article describing the crime to the lawyer representing us at the closing.  I asked both of them if all the financing was in order and if the real estate office had received their down payment (it was a small one because they have a special loan from the USDA with full financing and only a $2000 down payment.)  It's a lot easier to turn your back on and forfeit $2000 than $20,000. 

Now what do we do?  I have spent months getting furniture, antiques and books sold from the house, and only the other day gave the final sweep to the floors.  I wasn't worried that anything would go wrong.  My brother and Curtiss, who worry about everything, were worried and this confirmed their worst fears.

I might have known that it was too good to be true.  Here we were thinking we had finally found the perfect buyer--do it yourselfers who wanted to fix the place up.  Reasonable people who waived their rights to inspection for lead paint and radon.  People who said that any books we left on the shelves were OK with them.  I told myself they were nice people and I looked forward to meeting them at the closing.  Now I discover that the husband is a thief.  Shock, bewilderment, and even heartbreak don't even begin to describe my feelings.

We will have to shut the house up for the winter because we can't afford to keep the heat and utilities going without a tenant to pay them.  There's no furniture in the house, so how could we rent even if we could meet the stringent landlord requirements?

I haven't told anyone about the buyer's rap sheet.  I don't know how to tell anyone.  It was bad enough having to tell my brother that the buyer has simply disappeared and is incommunicado.

My aunt Joan says that there will be another buyer and not to make myself crazy over this.
But I can't sleep.  I don't know what to do.  There is nothing I can do.  Can we hold them to the contract?  Did they even succeed in getting the loan?

We've spent over $4000 to the law firm, so they'd better give us some good legal advice.
I need some answers.  It's not so bad that the closing isn't taking place this Thurs. as planned, but a buyer missing in action?  Maybe on the run from the law?

Why is this happening when I worked so hard to bring about the sale?

The piano teacher

Ally (age 7) and me at her piano lesson (June 12, 2013)

Ally: I really like the inside of the piano!  It looks like a place where fairies could live.

Me:  It does!  But--how would they get in and out?

Ally:  There's a space in front ( pointing to the gap between the music rack and the strings)

Me:   There is!

Ally is a real character!  She spent the better part of her lesson composing her music.  I wrote it out for her and it contained some interesting melody lines that were quite un-childlike.  She is very smart, very willful, and a touch spoiled, but she's very cute and imaginative.  She told me that she wanted to finish her piece but that her younger brother tore it up.  "Oh, that's terrible!  You've got to keep your music away from him," I said before I actually saw the piece of paper in question.  It had a large jagged tear which was easily mended with a piece of tape.  Ally goes for the drama every time.

She also knows that unlike most adults, she can tell me about where the fairies live and I will believe her.

Stuck in limbo

I have brief periods of respite from depression.  Last weekend, for example, I attended my friends' wedding, and was distracted for two days from the unpaid bills on the estate, the worry over the house not selling, the fear that I am sick with something serious instead of merely having a chronic stomachache from anxiety.

Depression and anxiety, my old friends.  I was probably experiencing them in utero.
Certainly, I was a depressed child and teenager.  As an adult, I take my antidepressants faithfully to ward off falling deeper into the abyss.  Now the feelings are exacerbated by grief.  I've arrived at the stage where I accept the fact that my father is gone forever.

My intent in writing this is not to gain pity.  It is simply to describe what it's like.  Sometimes the writing makes it clear that things could be, and have been, a lot worse than they are now.  But I have terrible money karma and that I have used up whatever good gig karma I had more than 9 years ago when I left the Four Seasons.  If you believe in karma.  Maybe it's just terrible luck.  I don't believe that people create their own success.  People have other people who help them succeed.  People with rich parents have an advantage over the rest of us.

I'm trying to enjoy the spring flowers.  I'm trying to motivate myself to do something creative with the free time I have left before starting work again on the 28th.  But mostly I end up online and watching endless TV.  At least I did about 90 minutes of yard work yesterday.

But I feel defeated.

View facing south, 21 Browns Rd.

The house that wouldn't sell itself

My father's 18th century stucco over fieldstone and clapboard mixture house has been on the market since mid-March with about 15 showings and no takers, even when the listing price was taken down from $220,000 to $200,000.  Mind you, this house comes with extraordinarily crafted old stone walls and 3.5 acres of land, including a tarn (don't ask) an old barn, garage, and guesthouse, which back in 1960 has an outhouse which my brother and I delighted in, but which has since sunk into the surrounding woodland.

The old saying, "Location, location, location" was never more true than in this case.  The house is located in a historic district full of lovely 18th century houses (some even older) in various states of disrepair, or remodeled with the modern kitchen and master bedroom suites which are de rigueur nowadays, at least if you believe the shows on HGTV.  The problem is not so much that my father's kitchen and bathrooms have not been remodeled since 1967 (though the kitchen has a floor only a few years old) but that there is nothing to do in Mansfield.  Not unless you are Emily Dickinson (I can hear my father laughing at that one) or perhaps an herb farmer or horse owner.  The house is an 8 minute drive from the University of Connecticut, which was a selling point for my father when he got the teaching job at UConn.  My mother was sold on the beautiful grounds, upon which she eventually created an herb garden, rose garden, perennial beds, and vegetable garden, all lovingly tended.  If only a couple like them could materialize today.  An unworldly faculty couple who don't notice if there are ants in the non-trendy kitchen, or the occasional mouse.  People who regard the phrase "master bedroom suite" with scorn if not derision.
Writers, people whose lives are largely in their minds, as my father's was.

You wouldn't want it as a vacation home even though there is Echo Lake nearby where you can go sailing or boating (at least when I was a kid) and there wasn't a town beach then, though maybe there is now. No, it must be a year-round residence (unless you have a vacation home somewhere else, in which case you'd be rich enough to afford an upgraded house with all the demands of modern yuppie life) My brother wanted to hold on to the old homestead for our sons, but my guess is that neither of them would want to live there, nor would they want to be absentee landlords.  And I would never want to put them through the sheer pain in the ass that selling this house has turned out to be.

Land, you say? "It's the only thing that lasts! Tara!"  Well, not exactly.  Land is almost worthless in Mansfield because of its lack of desirability as a residence--after all, the nearest mall is a couple of miles away, and it doesn't have Abercrombie & Fitch because the beautiful people don't shop there.  For some reason, it galls me that my father's land is worthless.  And it's not just any land.  It's land that was lovingly cultivated for years, and then lay fallow after my mother's death 28 years ago.  Old apple trees and evergreens.  Lilacs taller than you.  Boxwood hedges kept clipped as topiary, large round balls which look as though they belomg to a much grander house. (Not sure whose idea this was; someone probably suggested it to my father.) A hidden garden (or what used to be one) in the foundation of the original barn which blew or burned down in the hurricane of '38.

Tomorrow I am going to the house at 21 Browns Rd.  I will be consolidating bank accounts and paying off the last $400 odd dollars that are owed on my father's loan.  Tuesday at noon I meet with Paul Johnson, the landscaper who has worked for my father for eons and who wants to do some things that will give the house more "curb appeal."
There is a broken-down fence in back that should be taken away--I hope he can do that, because even if I could fit the wood into my Civic, the town of Mansfield makes you pay for the priviledge of dropping off your oversized trash at the dump.

Then there's the problem of the junk in the garage left there by a handyman friend of Dad's for a few years and which I hope he has taken out by now.  If he hasn't, I will have to take legal action to get rid of it which will cost me another $1000+.  And the old mattresses in the barn--I have to pay to get someone to cart them away.  And the carpenter ant problem in the kitchen.  And the leaky roof.  This is my karma.  I wonder what I did in a former life that was so terrible that I deserve this punishment in this life.  I want to be paid a nuisance fee for having to be the executor and give my brother less than half the estate.  But this will foment discord, which is more bad karma.

Someone will buy the place. Someone.  But when?

The word from Bruno Heller

Hi Mentalist fans,
Well, it seems in the last Bruno Heller interview he says that Red John is "definitively" not
Patrick Jane.
That's a relief!
I was afraid the series (hitherto one of the best on TV for 5 seasons) was going to degenerate into a cheap imitation of Fight Club.  Heller also says that Red John is one of the 7 suspects on the list.  But which list? a fake one meant for Red John or Jane's real list, which exists only inside his head? Or is the list we saw in photo form and heard Lorelei read on the DVD THE REAL LIST?

I still think that of all the suspects, Brett Partridge fits the profile the best.
Honestly, I don't know why McAllister and Reede Smith are even on the list; they are such minor characters and each only appeared in one episode.  Is this the "disappointment" of which Heller speaks?  That some nobody will prove to be Red John?  The banality of evil and all that?

I don't recall Smith at all, and my main memories of McAllister are
1) my mistaken belief (and intentionally misleading story line) that McAllister was the murderer of the red-headed women in the episode because he acts very suspiciously when Grace is acting as a decoy to entrap him.  It turns out that the murders were committed by a nutjob chef and his wife who liked to watch.
2) McAllister loses at several rounds of rock, paper, scissors, with Jane.  But then Jane always wins at poker and chess, so it's reasonable to surmise that no one beats him at a game.  Which is why Red John loves the challenge and is sure he will win this time.

Hmmm, Gale Bertram could easily be the one: head of the CBI, on the inside in an important position, probably told Timothy Carter to meet Jane in the food court in the finale of Season 3, is involved in some shady plan with Kirkland that involves Lisbon ("can we trust her?")  And he quotes William Blake's Tyger Tyger, which RJ recites when he talks to Jane who is bound up with tape.  Later on, a dying RJ operative taunts Jane with "Tyger, Tyger."  This is obviously some sort of secret word among RJ acolytes.

Kirkland? It seems more likely that he himself wants to catch RJ.  Either that, or he stole the timeline from Jane to find out what Jane was thinking in order to mess with his mind.
Kirkland kills Lennon in the hospital for unclear reasons--Lennon worked at the women's shelter where Lorelei's sister Miranda stayed.  He asked Lennon "do you recognize me?" and seemed to think he was doing Lennon a kind favor by dispatching him.  The type of thing RJ might say--he is a showman about death, as though it were something to be staged in a play.

Ray Hafner?  Certainly a suspicious character, trying to co-opt Lisbon into working for him and asking her pointedly if she stays on the job because of Jane (much as Lorelei tells Jane that she thinks he stays with the CBI because of Lisbon.) She discovers he's a member of Visualize, which was harboring the young RJ.  So...he certainly is connected, if not the man himself.

Bret Stiles? Too old.  Why is he on the list?  He's a slimy bastard for sure, and he's got something to hide.  He may be enjoying the RJ/Jane show and manipulating both of them--a puppetmaster of sorts.  But RJ? No.

And why are there two guys with the name Bret? (tt)?

Getting back to Partridge: He makes an appearance on the season finale after not being on the show for a very long time.  Jane hates him, calls him a ghoul, says he likes his work too much (works for CBI coroner and is a crime scene examiner) He also admires "great" killers.  He says that Eileen's murder is a RJ copycat, and when Jane asks him if he's sure, he says he's just guessing, and Jane is the expert.  He could just be a serial killer groupie like the zombies on "The Following," or he could be RJ himself.  We don't know much about him.

To be continued...

The Mentalist Season Finale (Season 5) Red John: Psychic or Mentalist?

 The following is the only explanation that makes any sense to me.

"This is the final chase," Heller says. "We will know who Red John is and we will catch him next season. Everything that has happened over the past five years will come to a head, and things will change drastically. This is the biggest finale in terms of game-changing and setting up for the last act of the Red John saga. This is as definitive and revolutionary as you can get." [from the Red Blog]___________________________________________________________________

__________________________

BUT THE REAL MYSTERY IS THIS:

It would seem that either

a) Red John IS psychic, otherwise how would he know not only Jane's exact final list of suspects which only Jane knows, but also Jane's memory of the girl Eileen whom RJ murders? also, that the memory was a treasured one, which he destroys on purpose by killing Eileen.   (Note: Heller obviously wants us to believe along with Jane that there are no real psychics, only clever fakers, so I doubt that this is the answer.)

OR

b) Red John is Patrick Jane (how else would RJ know these things if there are no such things as psychics and only Jane knows them?)

OR

c) Red John is a mentalist like Jane and is using trickery to make it seem like he is really reading Jane's mind when actually he is just using info he got from carney people from Jane's youth, and his list of suspects matching Jane's is the result of theft...see explanation below.

If we are going on the assumption that there are no real psychics and Red John is NOT Patrick Jane (this would be horribly obvious and derivative--Fight Club already did this better than Heller would be able to do, and it would be a simplistic plot device  not worthy of TM writers.) then we must find out how the hell could RJ have possibly known things known only to Jane himself.

At first glance, it seems that the only possibility here is that Jane told someone else about both the memory and the suspect list, but whom and when?*

It would have to be someone who either told RJ directly or someone RJ got this info out of by force or by bribe.  For the Eileen memory, it might be someone from his past who observed that Patrick was happy at the scene we see when he was 12 years old.  Or maybe just someone who knew the kind of memories Jane would treasure of someone RJ could kill. Possibly Sean Barlow, the creepy psychic who probably is a mentalist almost as good as Jane, gave RJ this info.   Eileen was his niece, so he probably saw them playing together.  He has already disowned her, so he doesn't care if she dies.  He does want his grandchild, so RJ makes sure he has an accomplice kidnap the baby.

The list of suspects is trickier.  The only way someone other than Jane could access it is someone who broke into his room and was able to find it.  Jane is far too clever to leave the real suspect list where an intruder could find it, so he probably memorized it and left a fake written list.  There was an earlier break-in in which Kirkland ends up with the RJ timeline collage (also almost certainly faked)

What might have happened is that Jane left a fake suspect list where an intruder found it and conveyed it to RJ.  So only Jane knows the REAL suspect list but RJ got the fake list. (Jane's photo cards with the suspects' faces on them are also fakes--he actually has a whole different list in his head)  So the list Lisbon sees is not the real list and Jane knows it. He also has managed to fool RJ.  Jane undoubtedly prepared for the event that RJ gets hold of his suspect list by creating a fake one to throw him off the scent.

The appearance of Lorelei on the video reading RJ's letter was not a surprise to me; I have always thought that she faked her own death, that it was staged.  The video could not have been made before her "death" because Jane did not have the final 7 suspect list yet.  So we know that Lorelei is still alive. She says Red John will not make her suffer as much if she reads the letter to Jane, so RJ must be holding her hostage. 

* actually, RJ makes no direct reference to the actual scene of the memory that we see.  It was enough for him to make it seem like he knew the exact memory when in reality he only knew that it was a memory--any memory--of Eileen would be enough to hurt Jane.  All he would need to find that out is someone who knew Jane and Eileen as kids and saw them playing together.  This points to Sean Barlow for sure.  He could have told RJ to stick it to Jane by killing Eileen.
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WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Boston Marathon 2013 Tragedy

It's too soon after this horrific event for me to be articulate, so I will postpone my commentary until more information is available.  My heart is broken for the parents of the 8 year old boy who was killed in the blast, and for the families of the others killed and terribly injured.  I am sending healing Reiki and prayer and I am praying that the killer, who is still at large, will be captured.

Kata Kozma: My former student and genius

"Genius" is not a word I apply lightly.  It's a rare thing, and I know it when I see it.  Even as a Berklee professor teaching at a college where there is an abundant amount of extraordinary young creativity, I have only come across genius once among my many students.

I first encountered Kata Kozma in my Reading 2 lab at Berklee.  We got to talking about Diana Krall, Oscar Peterson, and jazz piano/singing in general, and I learned that she had an extensive background in classical piano.  What astonished me was her jazz piano playing ability--she could swing harder than any student I had ever heard, and had excellent technique and improvisatory skill.  She was extremely modest about this, and expressed her admiration of Diana Krall, who was her role model at the time.

I did not see Kata again for a couple of years.  When she was a senior, I was pleased to have her as a private lesson student.  Before this, I had heard that she was selected by a panel of famous jazz pianists (including Joanne Brackeen, who also had Kata as a student and has very high standards) to perform in a concert featuring young female jazz pianists at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  I watched the video of the concert and I am not exaggerating when I say that she was by far the best of the performers.  I also listened to tracks she made of her own performances on both piano and vocals: she performs both standards and originals in a very original way

By the time she became my private student, I wasn't sure there was anything I could teach her.  Yet she insisted that she needed help in learning how to replicate open position jazz voicings with tensions, so we worked on that.  She and I made some informal recordings of us playing jazz piano duets and vocal duets which are amazing.   Also at this time (2010) Kata helped me revamp my website, designed new business cards, and took professional photos of me.  It was then that I discovered that Kata is not only a brilliant musician but also a painter and graphic designer, and a phenomenal photographer who could be a professional--she even made an aging and unphotogenic college professor look beautiful and glamorous! She and I share a love for Lady Gaga (at least as she was then) and I had a secret hope that with Kata's help I might become the Lady Gaga of jazz.  It hasn't happened yet, and I'm afraid the jazz world already has its over-the-top diva in Haromi. But you never know...

 Kata is a young woman who could excel in several different fields.  By the time she graduated, she was more interested in being behind the scenes (producing) than she was in performing.  I was a little disappointed because she was such an extraordinary jazz player/singer.  But I wanted her to follow her dream, and I believed she ought to be in New York.  I told her so, as did many other people, and at first she was not convinced, but now she realizes that New York is where talent like hers belongs.

I have been following Kata's career with interest on Facebook.  In a remarkably short time, she has established herself as a writer/producer with her own production company in New York and has created a jingle-writing collective.  She produced Sanura's first CD and is currently producing CDs for several up-and-coming neo soul artists. She is the hardest-working person I know.

There is no young musician I know who is more deserving of an artist's visa than Kata Kozma.  Someday the world will take notice of her and give her the acclaim she deserves.

First post in 2013

It has been almost 6 months since my father's death in October.  His demise was followed not long after by the decline and passing of my Uncle Buddy, beloved patriarch of a large family with 6 great-grandchildren, husband of 60-plus years to my Aunt Joan, who has suffered a crippling loss.

Of course death has been on my mind these many months.  And instead of becoming less depressed, I become more and more energyless and despondent.  I have forced myself to deal with matters concerning Dad's estate: the minutiae are endless and they have robbed me of any creative spirit I might otherwise have had.  A composition I began months ago sits on my desk with a note on it saying "Edit in Finale," but I don't have the energy to work on it.  I'm not practicing much due to tendinitis in my right elbow which doesn't go away.  I used to deal with this by practicing with my left hand only, but now it's easier just not to deal.

On weekends I lie abed late in the morning.  This morning I awoke at 11, full of free-floating anxiety about what needs to be done, even though it's Saturday, not even a business day.  My faithful cat is nestled beside me hoping I won't get out of bed.  His mute empathy (or so it seems) is the one thing that comforts me, and I close my eyes and go back to imagining various final episode scenarios for The Mentalist until I fall asleep again briefly.  I wake up again a few minutes later trying to think of a good reason to get out of bed.  I'm not hungry, so it won't be necessary to cook breakfast.  Curtiss, who never sleeps much, is already up and at his computer.

Finally I pull myself out of bed and go into the kitchen to confront the huge pile of bills and other paperwork that I have been avoiding.  Not only must I pay my own bills, but there are my father's bills too--the cable/wireless, electric, and the $700/month oil bill that gets deducted from the new estate bank account I set up two weeks ago. The other day, the new credit card was rejected when the oil company ran it, and I had to run to the bank to activate the card by using the ATM.  I expect things like this to happen.  This morning I find an email from my father's accountant saying she still needs some more papers to file my father's return by April 15, which is looming.  I have to wait until Monday to get any business done, and I already have several to-dos on my iCal for that day.  I make a note of the phone calls I must make, then make a call and leave a text trying to track down a "handyman" who has been using my father's garage as a storage facility for two years.  My father, in a weak moment, apparently agreed to allow him to do this.  The man is said to be an alcoholic and utterly irresponsible.  The good news is, he's apparently come to take away some of it.  The house is being shown, and it doesn't help to have the garage stuffed floor to ceiling with junk.

Then there's the contractor I've been playing phone tag with.  The hall light ceiling fixture in dad's house has filled with water and no longer works, and there is water leaking from the roof in another part of the house according to our house sitter, Tasha.  I can only hope that the house doesn't need a whole new roof.  As Dad's gambling habit grew worse, he neglected repairs to the house.  The landscaper who mows the lawn and prunes the trees said that Dad had neglected the grounds for years because he didn't want to pay for the care that would have prevented the property from becoming overgrown.

There is about $6000 in the estate account.  This has to be enough to pay for remaining expenses, or I will have to dip into my inheritance money which is supposed to be for our retirement in France or Ecuador, whichever will take us with the least problems. (To that end, I am reviewing my French and learning Spanish online,  also reviewing my Italian since it's there--this has become a daily distraction from the bureaucratic black hole I have been sucked into.) Of course, the sale of Dad's house will enable us to pay any unpaid bills, but who knows when or if that will occur?  There have been at least 3 showings but no offers.  The beautiful old 18th century house with its barn, guest house, and garage on 3.5 acres of land enclosed by extraordinary stone walls, with ancient trees and my mother's perennial beds which still survive 28 years after her death.  Selling for $220,000 asking price, which means we will be lucky to get $210,000.  It's a travesty--the house was assessed at $350,000 just a few years back.  But Connecticut is in a depression.  The state is out of money, so the Town of Mansfield levies taxes on every possible thing, including the privilege of taking your bulky and large trash to the dump.  The Holts' Georgian mansion, furnished with antiques, now a bed and breakfast, is still on the market, down to $800,000 from the original listing price of $1,000,000.  Mrs. Holt is the heiress to the Holt, Reinhardt, and Winston publishing fortune, and if her mansion were in Newton, MA,  it would be selling for 2.5 million.

I have come to believe that I am unlucky as far as money is concerned.  It's not because I don't manage money well--I do--it's just that my father gambled away the money my grandfather meant my brother and me to have, and Dad just assumed we'd recoup the money when we sold his house.  He also thought that when he hit the big jackpot at the casino his kids would be set for life.  Instead, if he ever won any money, he just gambled with it again. And lost.  He died without any winnings.

No one compelled me to become a musician.  In my 20's, I thought with the arrogance of youth that I would make a lot of money some day.  Instead, it meant a hand-to-mouth existence my entire adult life, always worrying that I would not have enough money to pay the rent or later, the mortgage.  What I feared most was ending up on the street, a bag lady muttering to herself.  While this has never even come close to happening, I have had to budget strictly.  I have not bought a new car since 1999 and I paid cash so as not to have loan payments.  Even then, I had to beg my father to give me the $12,000 I needed along with $3000 I borrowed from Barbara.  My own condo needs repairs that we cannot afford.  Curtiss, who generously gave me a lot of money (when he had it) to do repairs on the house, is now on disability.  I am 60 years old and have no pension--I am part-time, paid by the hour, lucky to have health care thanks to the Berklee union.  I have been functioning this way since 1995.  I will probably not be able to retire--they say you need at least 1 million saved up.  I work very hard, am always exhausted, and make very little money.  I have a lot of company.  The corporate culture has created this scenario for the majority of my generation.  And now they are taking away our Social Security, which in any event will be a pittance and not enough to retire on.

I remind myself every day that there are things to be grateful for.
my eyesight: saved by Dr. Sang, one of the best retinal surgeons in the country
my son: doing well at his job in Ecuador, planning to go to grad school along with his girlfriend, whom I also love
Curtiss: one of the few people who always have my back, who is getting well slowly but surely, and talking about getting a job
Barbara: another of the few who always have my back, still my loyal friend after all these years
my other girl friends: Debbie, Fay, Jeri, Phyllis, Lori, Yanni. They keep me sane.
my little students: Gavi, Ella, Ally, Sarah, Ava, Pete, Aashini, and Pranati.  Learning to play the piano, improving, getting ready for a recital in May!  Their drawings have covered a wall behind my piano.
my cat Sparky: a lap cat, doglike, he follows me around trying to console me in that mute animal way
my Aunt Joan: who also has always had my back, now needs me to have hers.  I have never seen her cry before until she lost Buddy.  Like me, she is embarrassed to cry in front of others and usually manages not to.  At 83, she is hanging onto her health, talking optimistically about coming to visit me in June or July and having me show her around Berklee.  She still goes to work every day as a counselor.  She is strong and courageous, but she has been crippled by this loss.  Something of her energy may have been lost for good.  She used to be relentlessly optimistic, cheering me on through my darkest hours; now her optimism is still there, but for the moment it is eclipsed by grief.  We spent some time with her in NJ and Curtiss made a video of her talking to me.  I am afraid of losing her, too, and if she dies this year I will be overcome with despair.  But I have to face the possibility.  Not be prepared, because no one can be prepared for the death of someone you love.  Death will always drag your loved one to the unknown. No matter how hard you hold on, your grip will be broken and Death will win.

One day I will open my arms to life again and stop thinking about death.  I must embrace life or I will never perform or write music again.  Life is what gives us the ability to create.  At the moment, I am just getting through each day.  I sit in front of the TV night after night, anesthetizing myself as I multitask with Facebook, email, word games, language lessons, and various web sites so I don't have to feel the pain.  I feel guilty about being a slug, so I forced myself to go to my personal trainer on Thursday and signed up for a once a week session for a month.  I'm not exercising as much as usual, and eating sweets and other unhealthy carbs.  It's not that I don't care anymore--I just have to muster the strength to care.