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Thursday, March 11, 2004

Friday 5th March 2004 - Sonia, aged 23, fiddler/artist/general country style ramblin' troubador Maryland

The sun is not up yet, though it promises to be soon, and the muddy smell of spring yet uncertain taints the Southern air. I'm wanderin' outside in ankle-high dew-laden dead grass, thinking about what it's like to be lost at the crossroads, uncertain of where this year will take you. Today I will be workin' long hours at a hospital to earn my bread, and then, off-hours, be reading and playing and singing into the night. Maybe even read further Unfortunate Adventures of Lemony Snicket's ill-advised Baudelaire children . . .

My name is Sonia, and I'm a fiddler/artist/general country style ramblin' troubador. I live in Maryland, crossroads between the northern and southern U.S. Today is Friday, and this day I am 23.

I never thought turning an age would hit me so hard, but it makes sense now, what Oscar Wilde, wily sinful genius that he was, used to do, dressing in black each birthday, mourning another year of his youth lost. I am 23. I can't coast along sayin' I'm barely out of my teens. I am a twenty-something now, and I ought to be showing some kind of record of deeds for my years.

But I got nothin', unless it's long wild hair and a Martin guitar and a proclivity for singing the blues. I can freepaint walls masterfully, I know how to fabric-bind a book, and I can tell you the lyrics to any Dylan song you can name. But I'm still a bum, as far as actual deeds of valor and meaningfulness go. Sometimes I think we were born for another age, we troubadors, born to sing the deeds of Beowulf or Gawain or Aragorn and his ilk . . .

Other times I think that's why we're still here.

Posted by February 29th  

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