This is a creative nonfiction piece I wrote a few months ago for my CW class - the same one where we did all the form poetry. It's a little strange in that it deals more with memories than with actual scenes (with dialogue and so on) from my life. It focuses mostly on my tenth grade, which wasn't a great year for me, and the original draft (which I never turned in andwhich you can see if you're really interested, just email me) was a lot more explicit about my own experiences. The way I revised it here tries to hint at what was happening to me without simply stating it. It's built around a piece I was learning at the time: Chopin's Etude in E Major, Op. 10, No. 3. It's a very pretty piece of music, and I recommend you listen to it.
The names that were in this have been omitted and replaced with [name] to protect a few people. Each time, [name] refers to a different person, so don't let that confuse you.
I almost put a great deal of this in German, as it was somewhat relevant, but edited most of it out later. The one phrase that I think is still in here is "Es ist mir egal." For those of you who do not speak German, it means, roughly "It's all the same to me."
'Tristesse,'as far as I am aware is French (don't hurt me if I'm wrong!), and means 'sadness.' It's the title of the etude, as you will see if you read on.

Tristesse

Almost two years ago, someone took a photograph of me playing the piano. It's not an ordinary photograph, nor a particularly good one. It's tilted to an odd angle, and the camera is pointed down at the keys. I can see most of the piano, and I know it to be an old, yellowing Yamaha upright. I can see feet on the floor, in loose old sneakers with knotted laces - sneakers I still wear today. I can see hands on the keyboard, and the bracelet on the right wrist identifies them as mine. The fingers are tense - too tense, the joints clenched and sore. But the hands are in motion, and the keys are pressed. A pianist's hands? What do a pianist's hands look like?

I smile at the lady in glasses and walk across to the stage. The smile was towards her, but it's not for her. It's for me, because I don't feel nervous, and I'm pleasantly surprised to discover that. I sit down at the piano and judge the distance to the keys with my eyes. Too close. I push the bench back and play a scale, tripping slightly when I shift to contrary motion. It's an old piano, a six-foot Steinway, and the tone is good, although the control is poor. The keys press down too easily. Good piano for Mozart.
"Whenever you're ready."
I relax myself and stare at the keys. Dingy white, ivory against ebony, the black dulled by age to an oaken brown. I take a deep breath and lift my hands to the keys. Simultaneously, my foot shifts downward on the pedal. I pull the air back in and caress the first notes, slowly, and a little sadly, I always think . . .

From the depressed keys, I can recognize the piece I was playing when the photograph was taken. It's an etude of Chopin's - E Major, Op. 10, No. 3. The publisher entitled it Tristesse, or sadness, because the melody that occurs at beginning and end is so haunting. Chopin himself said that he had never written anything as beautiful. And also that it made him long for home. He meant Poland, I think, something concrete, but it's true in another sense. To me, Tristesse has never been about love, as a teacher once suggested. It's about seeking for something you're not sure exists, at least in the way you want it to - about looking for home, really.
They say home is where the heart is. I hope that's not true, because if it is, then I have no home. My heart belongs to nothing and no one - it is nowhere, save beating inside my own chest . . . 'funeral marches to the grave,' in the words of Longfellow. If home is only where the heart is, then possibly I will never have any home but my own body, and that is the most terrible thought of all. Then my home is where my life lived, hand in hand with my death. Then my home in where my idealism lives, hand in hand with my pessimism. Then my home is this prison of flesh and blood that is all that is truly me, yet at the same time what I want most to transcend.

Slowly now, and now stretto, speeding up, a stately procession, to come to a climax at the top of the octave, and then meander slowly downwards again, to the end of the introduction. I'm breathing shallowly, counting the seconds inside my head, holding the notes until they fade. As I shift my hands at last, my foot rises slowly off the pedal . . . was it good enough? Can it ever be good enough?

I remember [name]'s hands on the keys next to mine, practicing the top line of the duet. Long fingers reach out to span more than an octave. There's a dark spot on the back of one hand - the left, I think. The skin is smooth, as is the touch across the keys ? there is no visible tension. The fingers curl and stretch, silken springs against the gritty piano. Pleasant, elegant, confident. These are confident hands.
"You beat yourself up too much."
He said that to me, the same year the photograph was taken, in the same room. I don't remember exactly what I'd said to prompt it, but it was about piano. My reluctant medium. I long to make it my own - to have the keys respond to my touch as if directed by my mere though, but it takes years, and I can't help but come up short. I'm no prodigy, and I'm certainly no genius, and I guess that makes me feel inadequate. The confident hands tell me what lacks is self-assurance.
"You're always so quiet."
Music makes me quiet. The confident hands move away across the keys.

Just before my foot comes up completely, my right hand strikes down again, harder now. The pace quickens, but rubato holds. The music eager, the player reluctant. Twice, and then up, and twice again,a sforzando, then a short piano, and brief chaos. My eyes dart from side to side, my hands shift up in a crazy chord, split over and over to form a dischordant harmony. Up again by a whole step, and the whole thing over. Ritardando, a preparation for this: My foot flutters up and down on the pedal, trying not to blur the sound. My wrists arch upwards to extend the reach of my fingers. My hands tense - don't slip - as note follows note, searching upwards and downwards near blindly for the right keys. Once, twice, and the third time it takes, and races up breathlessly more than an octave . . .

I spend a lot of time running. It feels like my whole life I've been running. Running from people who think I'm crazy, who don't understand me, running away from plans, controlled futures, running away from pain and sorrow, the things in my life that scare me, the thoughts in my head that scare me . . . running away from me. Running into the unknown. And all the time I think I'm running towards life, towards truly living for the first time, all that time I'm actually running towards death, because my heart keeps beating, because I only have so long to live, and it drains away, tick by tick, with each step I take.
There are some circumstances - Saturday evenings alone at home, for one - that take the life right out of you. Something that makes it seem like whatever you do, you're stuck being bored, and being boring, too. And no matter how many times you run from that feeling, it just keeps catching up to you, laughing that you're not really good for much, are you?, until you can't take it anymore. Even though I've never really lost my mind, it always feels like everything can go to pieces overnight, just like that. One day you go to bed fine and when you wake up, the sun doesn't come up anymore. Just like that.

. . . only to fall sweetly back down, the sudden harmony jarring. It's too fast, I can't . . . I can . . . deep, heavy summer chords, and then another cascade. My little finger stretches out to reach a low B flat - I watch the key go down, but I can't hear the response, because my hands have shifted to thunder once again, majesty and grandeur -leading up, leading in, pulling me hesitantly forward. It all shifts suddenly, easily, an introduction to . . .

I remember seeing [name]'s hands before I saw him, the faint light in the back staircase reflecting off the pale skin. Twisting together in the darkness, the fingers betray what his face will not. I can read his anxiety, his insecurity. Only the hands show - his sleeves are pulled up to his wrists, earthen tones hiding years of unhappiness. One nail on the left is broken, lines of white scarring its hard surface. The thumbnails are painted black, but the coat is chipped and peeling, neglected. The hands are colourless and slow, the fingers short, the skin rough. Joyless, nervous, desperate. These are desperate hands.
"I'm sorry."
He said that to me, a quiet apology for a promise broken. I knew him well then - I did not need him to push back the sleeves to see what he meant. There's so much anger, and so much unhappiness, crammed into such short time spans, such short lives. If I close my eyes, I can see the finger clutching on the blade to find release, as clearly as if I had been there. On some level, I was. The sun hides from us all at times. Maybe it was about control. Maybe it was an addiction. But the desperate hands tell me that life's too short for this misery.
"You're leaving me again."
I have to keep running. The desperate hands reach out, clutching convulsively at my arm.

. . . chaos. The music goes wild. Con bravura, it's labeled. With bravery, but I don't feel brave. I feel breathless and terrified, my hands tensing and releasing over and over, seeking stretches, chords in contrary motion. I can feel the piano moving under my weight. Three cycles, up and down, faster still, and faster - come on, please, come on - and then I'm safe. It switches direction, the tension eases out, my hands lift higher off the keys with each stroke, slightly dischordant, but each time closer, closer, and closer still, until my hands lift nearly six inches, and come down . . . home. A new key. Blessed harmony . . . the corners of my lips twitch upwards . . .

People are always telling me I'm still young, but sometimes, looking back on it all, I feel as if I've lived a hundred years. I feel like I've lived through a hundred little things that I shouldn't have had to see. I feel like I'm out of breath from running, and even though each second takes æons to tick past, I feel like I'm living at a breakneck pace. It's slow and fast all at once, and I feel dazed, like maybe it's not really me in these shoes. If I'm still so young, why do I see my life stretch out on either side of me, bleak and barren and colourless ? a gray sky with no sun and no clouds and no stars, only dusty footsteps pounding out each endless second until my death.
There are times when it has to be like that, but there are also times when the grayness fades to black, and the stars come out, infinitely more beautiful than any sun. Sometimes I can fall back and enjoy it, and sometimes I sit, tense and alert, for movement in the still darkness, because I wonder whether dawn will bring shade or shine - or if there need be dawn at all. It has to fall to pieces in order to ever come back together again. Nothing's forever . . . but how old am I?

I can breathe again at last, and I find myself letting out the air I didn't know I had been holding in. Quietly now, but an ear to the melody. Soothing, each phrase comes twice, a mother's lullaby to a raucous but weary child, or a lover's song to the beloved at last returned, worn out and weighted by hardship. Triplets in the left hand slide seamlessly in, and the notes drop down like pieces in a puzzle, slower, slower . . .

I remember looking up at the night sky in Berlin, to see [name]'s hands grasping the railing of the balcony above mine. Next to him, a white cylinder taps, and gray cigarette ash falls to the street, many feet below. His hands remain still, the fingers not yellowed by nicotine, if only because their owner cannot stand the smell of smoke. There is nothing remarkable about these hands - the joints stand out, the knuckles hard lumps against narrow fingers. He laughs at a joke - I can hear the voice and the laughter, but wind snatches the words away. One hand lifts from the rail to push short hair back. Average, lighthearted, carefree hands. These are carefree hands.
"Do you want a bottle?"
He said that to me in English, in the supermarket, and made me laugh. Of course not, but . . . my memory flashes back and forth. Remembered - vertigo, blood rushing to my head, flashing lights, clasped hands, the smell blunt and intoxicating. Aspirin, a glass of still water, fiery liquorices down my throat. This world, this unexplored Wonderland maze . . . this I could live for. This I can feel pulsing in my veins, setting something loose - do I have wings? Can I fly? The heady liquid runs lines of fire and water through my body - light and airy, I might float away on the wind and never return. Sunset was hours ago, the evening of my wishes. Now I come, saturated, lighthearted, footloose, ready to dance, ready to be happy. And the carefree hands tell me life can be this simple.
"Es ist mir egal . . . oh come on, it will be fun."
It will be. The carefree hands close on the handlebars, and the old bike rolls forward.

. . . and then just barely faster, and now familiarity again. Soft and dulcet, no longer melancholy, but hopeful instead. Shorter this time, and building up to that same stately climax, and anticlimax, stretto and ritardando and crescendo, and still beautiful. Once again, it wanders down the octave to the tonic . . . more slowly this time. My fingers linger on each key, savouring the dream, reluctant to let the music go. Each note drops almost imperceptibly, the space between my fingers and the keys less and less until my hands are no longer moving . . .

I don't know if I've just left to look for myself, or if I've just returned from a long journey. Whichever it is, I'm not sure it matters. Maybe I'm not as young as people say I am, because there's some things I know that I'm not sure anyone else can ever understand.
I know part of me is still trying to escape the things that made me. A part of me doesn't want to stop running. Perhaps this is what home is - elusive, always ahead. Sending me forward, backward, from room to room, searching for something that maybe isn't there at all . . . for life to begin. I hardly realize, sometimes, that it already has. I'm afraid of dying before I've had a chance to truly live. But I think that's just it - perhaps living is all about the chase. Maybe we're all running together, and we go on running until something stops us. Until our hearts stop beating - our hands stop moving - our minds stop working - and then we're safe in our dreams, in the myth that home and life were just around the corner. After all, the human fantasy is infinitely preferable to reality. And what's so wrong with that?
I can't always be who I want to be, but I can be honest with myself about who I am. Who I want to be will always be there, right in front of me, and maybe I can reach out and touch it if I keep trying long enough. Which is all I need - there wouldn't be much to live for if we could all get what we wanted without working for it.
Life is a piece of music, an etude. "The really pretty one that goes crazy in the middle," I called the Chopin, and it's true. There are ups and downs and rough spots, and places where you can't help but worry that you'll hit the wrong notes. And sometimes you do, and it hurts for a while, but it's that much more beautiful when you get it right the next time. Life may be short, but it's not so brief that there's no time for second chances. In an etude, if you work to get the technique right, the rest will sooner or later fall into place.

The sound dies away at last, and I lift my hands gently from the keys. It seems to take and eternity, and then as my foot comes up, the piano shifts - relaxing, as it were, from the ardour of the performance. I smile at the lady in glasses again -for her, this time, as well as for me - and rise from the bench. It was all there.

Almost two years ago, someone took a picture of me playing the piano. Last Saturday, I played that same piece for a competition. That same beautiful piece that goes crazy in the middle. I didn't win any awards, but I walked away from the bench smiling, and that meant more to me than any certificate.
I remember my hands when the picture was taken, and I look at my hands now. Blue veins stand out lightly against the back of the palm, and the skin is rough and creased between the fingers. The pads of the fingers are hard, and there's a large callous on the ring finger of the right hand. One or two old scars darken the skin. The fingers are of average length, the nails clipped short. Cautious, tenacious, impatient . . . angry, stubborn, hopeful . . . all of these, and many more as well, and yet none of them at the same time.
"What do a pianist's hands look like?"
My hands.

The pianist's hands hang above the keys a moment before relaxing down onto the ivory, almost as if they are coming home.