June 13, 2011

The roofers are busy on Carolyn’s house just outside my study window, so I have to be careful how I curse at the printer and the Internet.

Grueling Sunday just past, singing for three services and the last full Cantaria rehearsal before the dress, and then the concert. Anxiety over missing the studio stroll dissipated because I couldn’t have mounted those broiling stairs anyway. Vomited during Cantaria (no one knew) and, when I finally came home, tightness in my chest hinted to me that I was having a heart attack. Even when I found that the tightness in my chest was exactly that, a cramping muscle that I worked out with my fingers, anxiety did not fully pass away. I slept fine, but with a strange dream. I was following somebody in my car in Cuyahoga Falls, when I missed a turn. The streets were very wide and made of red brick. I was backing up to make the right turn, when I saw an accident happening in my rearview mirror. A convertible car flipped over and a teenage boy came tumbling out. I backed up to help him, but he had turned into a talking cat. The cat was incoherent, but apparently not badly hurt. The owners of the cat came up and assured me he was OK, and then we went driving all together, where, I am not sure. When I woke this morning I was still anxious about how I felt, so I did what I did after my heart surgery when I was feeling iffy. I went to the Y and ran flat out for 1.8 miles before I finished off jogging, then did an impressive weight set. Clearly I was not having a heart attack, and I feel better now than I have in days. I think the discomfort was pure anxiety, about the day, and more distantly about Cambridge, for which everything is almost, but not quite, ready.

The roofers are whistling along to my CD. They do not know they are whistling Lassus.