Boston.

I cry very easily. This week some noble shoulders helped catch the tears. I was depressed, then mad, then confused, then cautiously triumphant, and then still depressed.

Of course I am also proud of Boston, of the police force, of the "happy" ending to this terrible, terrible event.

And what's coming now?

The future. I don't know what redemption is. Not in real life. Will justice be served or merely invoked? Dzhokhar is younger than my little sister. I'm not forgiving him. I want to shake him. Or go back in time and change his mind.

The past. Always more pure than the present.

I just talked to my mother on the phone. She told me the first bomber, the older brother, lived two minutes from the house I grew up in. We used to trick-or-treat at his house, in a development full of kids and families. There were helicopters circling on Tuesday and she didn't know why.

I hope I never have to serve on a jury. I can't ever look at someone and wash my hands of them. My first impulse is never to "convict." Doesn't that mean I lack "conviction?" I have a bleeding heart, I guess. I don't know what that really means. Maybe that I bleed for everybody. It gets all over the place.

The victims first.

Martin Richard.
Krystle Campbell.
Lu Lingzi.
Sean Collier.

But then there's always more. It never runs out. Stupid heart. I wish there were a cure. I don't think there is.


--FLR

How I'm feeling about Spring. And some other stuff...

It's Spring! How do I know this? I feel sweaty all the time and everything smells amazing. It's the scent of cut grass, of flowers, of anticipation, of my boyfriend... (He smells so good! Do you know people fall in love not with each other, but with each other's bacteria? Or something like that. SCIENCE.)

It's been so long...

What do I blog about? Tell me!

Mostly I'm posting this to relieve pressure after having been inexplicably silent since January. POOF! Pressure is off.

Well that felt good.

Stay tuned...

REVIEW! Les Misérables: Miserable, But Enjoyable

If there's one thing you must know about me, it's that I love pasta. If there are two things you must know about me, it's that I also love Les Misérables the stage musical (which I shall henceforth refer to with its gangsta abbrev "Les Miz").

Les Miz is my jam. I grew up listening to the soundtrack nonstop. I relish the (repetitive?) melodic themes, the moments when the rhymes don't quite work ("I am warning you Javert / I'm a stronger man by far!" --oh, Valjean). I can sing the final soprano note of "One Day More" so piercingly that all within earshot dash to their stoves to see if they've left a kettle on. I've seen the live show ten or some-odd times -- on Broadway, on tour, when my little sister played Eponine in her summer camp's epic production -- the last of which froze me in a downturned-lipped ugly-cry face for at least two weeks thereafter.

In other words: I'm a fan. Oh, I'm a fan.

So I went to the movie theater today (alone -- I'm not ashamed!) wanting to like the movie. I was prepared to weep openly. I was prepared to hum along to certain songs when the speakers were loud enough to mask it, lest someone throw me out onto the street. I was prepared to move seats several times to avoid the people who kept taking out their blindingly bright cell phones every five minutes, which was impossible, because everybody does this now?

In short, I was prepared to like it. And -- for the most part -- I did! I liked it!!!

I really did! It was not a walk in the park, but it was worth seeing!!

If you care to hear what I thought, please read on! If you don't, well, poop on you!

Farewell, 2012. You saucy minx.

And now a brief New Year's Eve post to tie a bit of a messy, loose-ended bow on this challenging and bizarre gift of a year....

It's not a tradition of mine to reflect on the year on December 31. Usually that comes on May 16, my birthday, in which I write a couple of pages in my private "Birthday Journal" (a Google doc, really) to sum up what's happened to me, how I've grown, what I'm proud of, what I'm afraid of... It's fun to periodically go back and read them, all in a row, so I'm fast-forwarding through time, and gazing at myself from a place of retrospection, an older sister to myself, whispering, "Keep going."

But 2012 has been profound, and I think it deserves some kind of acknowledgment, however brief.

"Hitting on" Tom Hardy

Fun fact! The stats section of Blogger reports that my extremely brief post on Tom Hardy (in which I quoted him saying strange yet accurate things about poodles) has gotten more than double the hits of my second-most popular post (on discontinuing my Facebook timeline). Go figure.

Anyway, thanks, Tom Hardy!

Also, sometimes I think Bane from The Dark Knight Rises is my spirit animal? In a non-creepy, non-terrorist, big-muscled, gypsy-accented kind of way.

Don't ask me to explain. Let's just go with it.

--FLR

What do you blog about when you're afraid to blog?

I've had blogger's block. It's not an accident. There's a reason.

I'm afraid to tell the truth.

Five-Trick Pony, as a workspace, lives sort of separately from my author-space. Separate from the whole promoting-Unnaturally-Green-thing, from my Twitter, from my weird alias Facebook, it's a space that's a little more sequestered than it is in the spotlight. (I like to think, anyway.) It's also been a space for me to speak on a host of random things that have crossed my mind (manicures, sweat, and other riches).

For the most part, I've kept it light. Mostly.

And now? I'm afraid to go dark.

Hence blogger's block.