The record I chose tonight was Prokofiev.  I bought it for the mandarin orange and butterscotch yellow design on the jacket.  I was stirring up spaghetti sauce and classical music seemed like the thing.  I didn’t really think about what Prokofiev was.  He was, on this record, spanking loud full symphony sawing away.

Most of the music I remember from growing up was of the militantly loud variety.

My elementary school music teacher played us “Night on Bald Mountain”: Halloween’s Texas-sized demonfest.  There are plenty of cymbals and enough drama to intrigue any kid.  When I saw the “Fantasia” sequences years later, I thought, how clever of Walt Disney to steal my teacher’s idea!

My piano teacher, although a jazzman at heart, taught my mother Rachmaninoff storms.  One day, he took my hand to measure my reach, and said, “Oh, you can play this one!”  Chopin polonaise.  He encouraged me to eat green vegetables to build up my strength.  ”When you get mad at your boyfriend, you can play this,” he would joke.  Alas, I was desperately far from having a boyfriend to be mad at.

I descended a steep staircase with a sign that said, “Fallout Shelter,” into a maze of hallways with swiss cheese acoustic tiles.  While I waited for my lesson, I zealously read Reader’s Digest, absorbing all the joke bits and trying to remember the funny ones.  Then I would pounded my polonaise again.

I played violin, too.  We played some subtle, quiet pieces, including Barber’s Adagio.  It pained me to screech or go hoarse with my bow.  There was no room to teeter.  It was like walking a tightrope over a snow-white room, your hands black with ink.  When we cranked up with the French horns and the big drums, you could slide a little flat or sharp, and be absorbed by the vacillations in the group’s tones.

You can see I like the loud stuff because, musically at least, I am lazy and sloppy, but full of enthusiasm.   The hairline brushstroke or the held-breath rest can be beautiful.  I’m just too impatient to grow the skills, except if you want to talk commas or grammar or spelling.  Having patience for the details is always a sign of love, rather than goofy infatuation.

BEAST FROM THE EAST faces THE BROWN BOMBER

Round One: Halcyon days of my youth.  I drink apple juice in the AM.  My dad drinks coffee; my mom drinks tea.  Coffee makes a Dad-like, church-like smell.  Tea makes a dark cabinet, autumn rustle smell.  Coffee appears in Dad’s cup and on Dad’s breath.  Tea comes from a kettle on the stove that whistles, and then something you dunk in it.  Coffee is for boys; tea is for girls.  Coffee is for business; tea is for life.

Judges say: Tea by a reasonable margin.

Round Two: Age 12ish, I spend a little time down south.  Am asked at every meal, “Tea?”  My dad has to specially request “Yankee tea.”  This type of tea tastes like the kool-aid without the delightful reddy flavoring that is not precisely “strawberry” or any other “fruit.”

Judges say: Coffee, due to tea’s exceptionally poor showing, and early cultural isolation of the judge.

Round Three: After swing dancing for hours, I have a busted big toe, and I smell like the beer that has been spilled on me, but my swishy red dress still looks great.  Let’s walk down the street and hang out a little longer.  Order a mocha, I am told by boy I danced with who was dancing trained in an Austrian year abroad.  You’ll love it.

Judges say: Coffee.  I do love it, partner!

Round Four: Overseas in a Muslim, formerly British-controlled area.  Tea all the way.  I am treated to high tea at the Ritz-Carleton.  They have real, single-use cloth towels in the bathroom.  All the chandeliers you can eat, and floors more fit for eating off than any surface I’ve yet encountered.  I will have tea with milk.  All the finest varieties.  Pert sandwiches, tarts, and other delicacies still in their infancy, from the looks of them.  I would love to love you, tea.

Judges say: Coffee.  After such an impassioned rally on the part of tea, it is a crushing blow.

Round Five: In Rome.  Although some people keep raving about food I will eat in Italy, foodies tell me Rome is a culinary cesspool.  I am committed to cappuccino and red wine at every meal, regardless.  I’m on vacation.  First Roman lunch, at a place that bears a sneaky resemblance to a Jersey diner, first sip of first Italian cappuccino.  Ten minutes later, as my senses return to normal, I realize that in eight days I will have my last Italian cappuccino.  That will be devastating.  Such are the strange workings of the human mind.

Judges say: Coffee reaches deep down and brings out his best, which does not disappoint.

The final verdict: Had coffee not spent so much time in church basement styrofoam cups (ew), it might have made a better showing early on.  The ugliness of the suburban-issue drip coffeemaker, so unimpressive it did not even register, also left room for tea to get some momentum.

The early exposure of cold tea, much preceding the appearance of cold coffee, may have dragged tea down too early.  Cold drinks, other than milkshakes and martinis, just don’t grab this long-limbed, easily chilled judge.

At least tea knows all the stops were pulled, and the entire force of the British empire was called in.  Tea can’t have any regrets.

Still, it’s coffee by a strong margin.  Coffee all the way.  Central American, cowboy, Folgers, beatnik, Seattle, up all night, free refill coffee.

I stopped at a stoplight last night and I breathed.  Like many hingepoint moments in history, this one was low on the razzle-dazzle.  I had come over the hill and stopped on the other side, when I saw the red light.  Sometimes, there, you can see the moon tucked in between sycamores and the swaying streets.

Last night you could not see the moon.

As the street had dropped down, approaching the light, I felt my anger bubble up.  Bubbles look glittery in a Coke, and lacy in the bathtub, but actually bubbles are dangerous.  You could kill someone with a champagne cork.  Or crinkle the crap out of your china cabinet.  Or burp.

I took a day off work this week because I was afraid I would lose it.  I can be frustrated or tired at work, but when I am sarcastic, I know I have to take a day off.  The danger signal this time came when a student refused to use the stubby pencil I had given her.

It was already ridiculous that she had to get a writing utensil from me, and now she sneered, “I don’t want to use this.”  “Really?“  I said, not in my usual mild, colorless, reflective tone, which shames students into compliance, but with a “Saturday Night Live” snottiness.

I survive work with a lot of dry humor, but even as I heard myself saying this, I was thinking, This is over my line.  I’m about to lose it.

So I took the next day off, finally getting the sleep I had been starving for, and shedding my headache.  At the end of this blessed day off, I was going to read a little and drink a cup of the best coffee in town.

This was a wonderful plan except that the coffeehouse was packed to the gills.  Someone was sitting at my one usual table, and someone else, equally clueless, was sitting at my other usual table.

I had better reasons to be angry and frustrated, better reasons than a lack of tables at coffee or a kid refusing to use a pencil.  We all do.

What interested me more than the cause of my anger was how I was able to notice it.  I have started to notice not when I’m about to lose my temper, but also the infusion of the violent gaseous energy. I’m going to hurt someone.  I will hurt someone so I will feel better. Once the bubbles burst, that is what’s left.  Desire for violence.  Gleaming like rock candy, shiny like villain teeth.

It’s outrageously satisfying, in that moment, to scream, crush, throttle, blather, slam, or abandon.  It’s great to do it to someone else, but it can be even more succulent to do it to yourself.  The last thing that occurs to you is that you could just sit there, feel angry, and breathe.

For some reason, I did breathe at the stoplight.  And then continue driving home when the light turned green.

I recently had a conversation with some Christian types about miracles.  Feeding of the five thousand.  Calming the sea.  We frowned and furrowed our brows over what these stories meant.  I don’t know if Jesus really made waves fall flat, or if his friends felt safe whenever he was around.  If he had that kind of calming skill, I can understand why he got so famous.

But I know it’s a miracle when anger bubbles tickle your nose and you can drink up without getting smashed.  When somehow the waters are calmed.  That’s a miracle every time.