jessingrassellino

Author: 54752785

  • The Call

    jess ingrassellino, july 2019

    Brushed off again. She’ll always be his second best, silver medal. First loser. “First loser” she chuckles out loud, in spite of herself. Pulls the Egyptian cotton sheet around her naked body. Soft, smooth, crisp fall air rushes in waves over her skin. Relief, for a moment, but she keeps turning over details of the last time she saw him.

    “I’ll call him tomorrow.”

    She’s lecturing herself now, head in hand. Bites her lower lip and considers her options. She doesn’t like the idea of telling anybody anything. Never did. Her jaw hurts. She’s grinding her teeth – front teeth when she’s awake, molars when she’s asleep – she stops herself and takes a deep breath, but can’t escape the anxiety.

    They’ve been planning, halfheartedly, to be more serious. She wants it, he’s not sure. “Commitment-phobe,” she grumbles, tossing over again. Bright moon, muted by sheer pink curtains. Curtains flapping open, intermittently, with the breeze. She wants to be his only. Married. Before she was twenty-nine, it never felt important to consider a serious partner, much less marriage, family, or children. But tonight? Tonight, twenty-nine is ancient and life is horribly unpredictable. Unfair. Tonight, everything that’s never mattered matters, and everything that’s ever mattered feels like a waste.

    On her dresser, her violin sits in its stand, untouched since she found out. Normally she practices daily, several hours a day. Lately, she wipes it gently with a soft cloth, leaves it out to try and coax herself out of her anxiety. Six months ago, he watched her prepare for auditions, and four months ago she’d learn she’d made the symphony. Now, she’s not sure about the trajectory. “If this is my time, how will I spend it? And what will make it matter?” She stares at ceiling, glancing back and forth between the shadows from tree limbs dancing and the moon creating them.

    She will call him tomorrow. After work. She’ll call him, and tell him, because she’s already delayed too long. Now, though, the call weighs on her mind, creeping steadily into her body. Her legs twitch – the left leg, really. The rough patch of skin on her left heel hits her right shin bone as she tosses again, to face away from the moon and closing her eyes.

  • Two Poems: Sketches of St. Petersburg

    jess ingrassellino, june 2019

    I read Spouts (1921), an earlier poem by William Carlos Williams. I enjoy his first person, direct, and conversational writing style. This poem, like many of his others that I have read, is a single experience written in fragments, making up just one sentence. There is a lot of economy in the way that Williams expresses experience, and there are new stories to be uncovered with repeated reading of his work. These two poems are my first assignment from my first writing class in June, 2019.

    St. Petersburg (May 15, 2019)

    Monument, 

    Taller than the other buildings – it seems, 

    Taller than everything. 

    Guarding the circle, the 

    Subway, the  

    twin buildings 

    Flanking the road 

    into the city. 

    Her dual histories stand, 

    Signed – Piter and Leningrad –  

    Overlooking the city and 

    Her history.  

    In the taxi, I 

    enter.

    The Serfs (May 16, 2019)

    Today, we saw the 

    Yellow building, 

    Three stories high, where

    Serfs were sold.

    Today, the 

    Red roof and clean

    Archways 

    Frame the view from the 

    Second story windows, where

    Tourists can see the 

    Seven bridges when they look

    Outside from the

    Safety of their rooms at the 

    Holiday Inn Express.

  • The 2 Octave Schradieck Project

    Starting in January, I was accepted to participate in Nathan Cole’s Virtuoso Master Course (VMC). To say it’s a major commitment to, and investment in, my violin and viola playing is an understatement. To see the progress I’ve made in 8 weeks is a shock, to me. But not to Nathan’s students.

    The thing is, I’m not going into this playing a lot of repertoire. In fact, I’m going backward to go forward. I was fortunate to learn violin in school, with good orchestra teachers. But I did not have the opportunity to seriously study technique until I was in college, and by that time, there were a lot of bad habits I had ingrained, especially in my left hand.

    Fast forward twenty years. I nearly lost my ability to play violin and viola after getting Covid in March 2020, which kicked my Spondyloarthritis (undiagnosed until November 2020) into high gear. I did not know what the hell was happening in my body, but it was bad. After getting diagnosed, the first thing I needed to do was get back to violin. I spent months working with my doctors to figure out a treatment plan that would allow me to play. It paid off. Last August, I worked to audition for several orchestras, and I now play frequently in the Hudson Valley and NYC. It’s not without pain, but it is with SO MUCH JOY!!!!

    Now, I have something rare. I have the gift of time to slow down, and go back and work on my basics. In the past 8 weeks, I have not focused on hard repertoire (except my orchestra music). The bulk of my practice time is spent in the basics I never experienced – one and two octave scales, played slowly, with beautiful tone, in different positions.

    Attention to the placement of the third and fourth fingers of my left hand.

    Alignment and hand frame.

    Speed, intonation.

    After the first four weeks in VMC, I decided the bulk of my practice time will be dedicated to the ugly, unglamorous work of the two octave scale, in all keys. Of Schradieck, played mindfully, attending to the placement of each finger, the way it lifts and returns to the string. The requirement of finger independence AND fingers that will work together as a team.

    This is the stuff of violin nerds. The stuff of technicians that, when mastered, seems effortless, and allows the music to shine through because there is control.

    Yeah, it’s tempting to go back to survival playing and bad habits. But it’s infinitely more rewarding to go on this journey of building mastery of my technique, of getting the experience I couldn’t get as a kid. And now, I appreciate it more. I have the time and the wisdom to know that slowing down, taking my time, and working intentionally on these basics is the thing that will allow me deep freedom and control over my musical expression. I have been keeping a private practice journal, but the little instagram videos I post show surprising progress in the short time I’ve been in the VMC.

    I’m bursting with excitement – I’m so ready to level up my technique and my ability to play violin in the way that reflects how I hear the music in my head! More to come…

  • The Past Comes Back

    Well. Through a series of unexpected events, a whole chunk of my past came back and hit like a brick today. A piece that I’ve placed neatly away in my mind, like a movie or a dream or a memory. I rarely talk about it, rarely engage with it. Denial stains everything about it.

    The wayback machine brought me to an old blog I’d thought lost, and I encountered raw and real and open writing. Things that I’d probably not talk about now, so openly. This bit struck me:

    “For me, there is a permanent homelessness that follows in my heart wherever I am. When I think of home, residences are not the foremost visions in my mind. The essence of a home – somewhere that you know you belong, somewhere that you fit no matter what happens – this essence is something I seek. Something I have sought. An essence that is altoghether missing from my life. So while he drives and stares, my brother reads and waits, I just wonder if and when I will ever go home again.”

    May 28, 2012

    Nine years later, I’ve found home. I’m relieved for Jess of 2012. She found her way through everything these past 9 years. I used to seek that external home – that place I’d walk in and feel “myself”, or that person who could make it so. The essence of belonging, of being whole.

    Back then, I didn’t feel I belonged in myself, let alone the world. Now, I am the world I need. I expand into the world, I inhabit spaces, learn from them, absorb them, become more at home as I expand my experiences, knowledge, mind, space. I’ll always be at home, because I have found a way to love myself, to forgive myself, to accept myself where and how I am.

    It’s a damn journey, one that still makes me anxious at times. But nine years later, I. AM. home.