I have been spending the wee hours this morning with an assignment to write a "prose explosion."
The following is my response and now I am to develop this into a haiku, highlighting fragments and phrases. My word limit was 250 words and the submission is 267 words, but I don't want to cut anymore of this essay.
I will post my haiku after the teacher's response. This is a learning experience that has been quite an eye-opener for me. It is difficult to write an acceptable haiku - less is more with haiku!
Remembering Carl
It glistens by the front window as the slanted black surface reflects sunlight, pleasures and promises of artistic pursuits in the making. However, it’s not the same since I googled his name and the obituary flashed on my screen. Cause of death not mentioned. No charities nor memorials gave a hint.
The choice to take another piano lesson from him disintegrated with a few lines on the computer screen.
Our beginnings were in a smoke-filled small teaching room at the local university. As an adult learner I sought lessons in my new town of Houston, It was therapy for me. I did not realize the therapy would become a long-term friendship.
When I realized he was gay I was probably more comfortable with the relationship. His partner of forty years cemented his “marriage” and the potential for our relationship to be very platonic.
I was in a place where my sexual antennas would waver when a man, any man, paid attention to me.
Once or twice during my divorce I chose to skip the lesson, pay him to drink coffee with me and just listen and empathize. Was his hourly rate more than a therapist? I didn’t care.
On every page of my stacks of music (current favorites - Chopin, Brahms, Khachaturian and lesser-known William Albright) are his fingerings, pedal markings, and scribbled dynamics from a ballpoint pen he shook to move the ink flow downward.
Now I can only relearn my previously checked-off accomplishments.
Perhaps someday, I will begin the challenge of new music with a new teacher in a new town.
Now I can only reminisce.
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