Waking Up

There is something in the story of Nellie that makes be stride forward. There is something in her story that is healing to me, and inspiring all at the same time.

I fall into bouts of depression quite easily. I shut myself off from my ambition, and I sleep a lot. This is a routine I go into, a kind of hibernation without a need. I slow my body down and I isolate myself from all of the work I've done to live a healthy, creative life, and I become something of an emotional hermit.

Quite simply Nellie got me out of bed today. Just the thought of her, and I shook off my own blocks and defenses and got myself up. I got dressed. I went and sat in the stairwell at Kerry, the old one to her living quarters, and I just was. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall and I listened, as well as felt, the vibrations trilling through the air from three pianos on different floors making their way into the staircase, flooding the halls, cascading down the stairs with a river full of opposing harmonies. I love this place. The wooden stair rails. The creaky floor boards. The way the curved windows in the 3rd floor stairway are a little buckled from the weather, and don't really fit as perfectly into their panes as before. The leaves of the pines flutter back and forth in the wind outside this particular window. Gold light falls in, smearing a streak across the stairway wall.

How many times did Nellie stop and sigh out of this window as I did today? Did she ever stop and think on these stairs, as I do often? If people found me there, what would they think? I'm starting to get past that now...this wondering what people think. If I constantly harped on this...I would never get anywhere. I believe this is where my frustration lies.

From the beginning of the beginning of this project (there have been lots of beginnings to this project), I've constantly been asking what people think, what I should do. "How should I frame this story?" "Do I sound crazy?" "Do you think this is interesting enough?" HOW, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY...

I think I need to listen to myself for once. Take a gamble on myself. I'm not sure how many times I've really done that in my life. Taken a gamble. Especially on myself. Nellie was one to take gambles. She took them on other people all the time. Like Martha Graham. And herself. And the radio school. And building Kerry Hall. And starting an art school. I don't know where this woman got all of her energy and her "chutzpah" from, but to me it's a wonder.

I would have to say that Nellie is helping me fight this depression somehow...I will finish this project. I will listen to what my inner self has to say. I will graduate senior year knowing I've invested in something worthwhile, and that something is myself. I have something to give to the world, and her spirit reminds me of this, and that I am brave, and willing, and open, and tenacious, and alive.