While I was searching for the ever-elusive pencil, despite starting each teaching day with a fresh pencil pile and sitting in one spot for hours, my student, Pat, described her life as being "written in pencil." What better way to sketch life than in pencil, I thought, shading here, erasing there, doodling on the edges and "penciling in" things in afterthought. We frequently define ourselves in heavy black ink, setting our lives down heavy on the page, closing our books, forgetting to read our own passages, much less compose them. (If we could only be as good at recognizing our own needs as we are at seeing what needs changed in others!) It seems to me the people who are experiencing life most fully are continually reinventing themselves, finding new ways to "become". It's interesting to realize the students have been pianists all along, just waiting to be discovered -- by themselves.
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