"I think you should move that last paragraph to the beginning," my mom said.
I looked at it and squinched up my face.
"But I put it where it is to leave the scholarship committee with warm fuzzies," I said. "See - because the first part is more dry, I want to give them something nice to remember me with."
"If they get that far," said my mom. I frowned.
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Ought that to be enough to start an argument? I don't think so. Yet, it did. Turns out I was very defensive over that particular scholarship essay, and with good reason. It wasn't very good. It was very abstract, much like this blog. I tend to think abstractly about myself, I told my mom. It's so funny, because my fiction is so concrete. No more. I shall keep abstractions to a minimum in this blog.
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PHC Chorale. It gave me some of my best memories of this past semester. No matter how tired I was feeling Mondays and Wednesdays, as soon as I entered Town Hall at 4:30 and saw Mr. Johnson and the other Chorale members, my mood turned up. It had a magic, a common spirit, this past semester that it didn't under Mrs. Cochran. We were all adults working for a common purpose. Or maybe I just felt that because I was singing tenor, and there were so few of us tenors that we all stuck together and listened very hard to each other. Mr. Johnson, however, recorded our Christmas concert and gave each of us CDs, and I can definitely hear something special. It's not just people singing; you can hear the pathos or joy in our voices.

I think it was Mr. Johnson. He so much enjoys music and conducting that he would start mouthing along with different parts and not even notice. He told us to throw whiteboard erasers at him whenever he started doing that, and we pelted him several times. ;) Such fun.

I have listened to our concert CD over and over again. At first I could only hear the parts I sang, because I was listening very carefully to see if I could pick out my own voice. I didn't even pay attention to the words. As time went on and I realized I either blended too well or was too quiet to be heard, I began actually to hear the music. Especially in the Latin songs, the way the parts fit is amazing. They twine around and climb over each other, but in the end they always come back together. Even if I can't hear myself, the knowledge I helped make that sound washes over me again and leaves me amazed each time I listen. I want to do that more and more.  ¶ 11:43 AM