Ever have one of those days? One of those weeks? The kind where everything gets your back up, and you feel like you're the only sane person in the world, and why can't eveyone just understand what you're getting at? You feel like every step you take is against a hurricane-force wind, uphill, through a crowd of people standing with their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears as you try, through gritted teeth and bright smile, to communicate?
Oh, yeah. Often.
Kate, babe, I'm with you. You have my sympathy.
If we could only direct our lives from the bathtub. With a stack of good books, a cup of tea or a glass of wine (depending on the hour of the day), good music nearby. As an extra treat, a nice box of chocolates close by, but not too close so the warmth of the stress-bleeding bath melts them, or so that you don't eat them too fast. (Can you tell I've managed to get this down to a science?)
Baths, however, in my world, no longer give me the relaxation I need. It's odd, but somewhere over the past ten years or so I've been on my own, a bath has lost its charm. It used to be that when I was upset, I'd go into the bathroom, run a bath, add bubbles, oils, the whole nine yards. Book. Candles. Music. Cat. (No, not in the bath, next to the bath, and I didn't put her there. She just likes to curl up next to the warm bathtub. Okay, and swish her tail around in the warm water. And play with bubbles.)
I'd sink in, and sigh. And just like that, I'd melt, and everything would be bearable.
Now, though, I'm just as tense in the tub as I am out of the tub. It's really frustrating. You start the routine, get in, close your eyes, expect the warmth and the gentle aromas to start working, and you end up staring at the ceiling after half an hour, wondering why you're not all soft and floaty.
It's a relatively recent development, within the last four or five years, I'd say. Eight baths out of ten, I get next to no soft floaty relaxation.
I don't think the quality of bath has decreased, which means it must be me. Am I too stressed for a bath to relax me? Is it living with someone? Do I need new towels?
Baths shouldn't be work. Baths should be mindless comfort. Baths should not stress me because they are not relaxing me.
I think I'll go play my cello. (Yeah, right. Like that will relax me.)
See? Medieval legly goodness. And it was all for Marc. (The look on his face under the hat that makes him look like an apothecary says it all, don't you think?)
I love these boots. They are my Jedi boots. They lace all the way up the front. I really don't wear them often, but when I do, I feel amazing. Bring on the Dark Side! I'll challenge it and preserve order and justice in the galaxy! Even in a medieval mini!
Happy Very Last Day of Work, Mum!
I heard the geese flying overhead last night and this morning as I lay awake in bed. It's fall.
I also know it's fall because my overwhelming desire to move furniture around is still running high. We switched a couple of pictures around last night in an attempt to assuage it. The pictures look great, but I still want to rearrange sofas and tables and beds and desks for some reason. I think it's connected to the Ikea urge, somehow; you know, that cocooning concept that revolves around the subconscious knowledge that you'll be stuck inside most of winter so you might as well create the ideal nest to be trapped in.
I picked up that CD I had ordered four months ago from HMV, and it's wonderful. I still find it a little odd that I, the woman who claims she doesn't enjoy Mozart all that much, special-ordered a Mozart CD. Looking back over my orchestra-related blog entries, I can see that I enjoy playing Mozart as well. Perhaps I should upgrade my Mozartean value judgement from "indifferent" to "reluctant enjoyment of certain pieces"?
Even in death, Andrès continues to educate me musically. I sang three hymns in Latvian this afternoon. Interesting language; sort of a cross between Swedish and Ukranian.
No, don’t ask me what I sang. I have an odd linguistic talent that enables me to read a foreign language and make it sound like I know how to speak it. I don’t know how I do it; it involves accents somehow, though. I’m just good with words. It’s all in how it sounds to the ear.
Funerals are strange. If you want a seat, you have to arrive early, but no one wants to talk, so you sit in silence for ages until the family arrives. There are never enough seats (except at Eric’s funeral this spring; there was plenty of room in the synagogue, but that was the only funeral I’ve been to that had adequate seating), so people stand in the side aisles and at the back of the church. I’ve been paranoid about being late for funerals ever since the funeral of one of my best friends in my first year of university, where I arrived right on time and had to stand in a crowd at the back of the church, so today we arrived forty minutes early.
This service was one of the nicest I’ve been to. Even though Andrès was taken from us so suddenly, the congregation was there to honour him, not for consolation. I wish more funerals could be as this one was: a commemoration instead of grieving. Yes, death is always a shock; yes, we are left, bereft and confused; but in the end, it is ourselves we weep for. If we gather, it should be to celebrate the deceased’s life and accomplishments. Mourning our loss always seems so selfish, somehow, when set against the brilliance and joy of the days and years lived by someone we all loved and respected.
I love the way my circle of friends counts down to Hallowe'en as most people count down to Christmas.
(And it even has nothing to do with the fact that a large chunk of the aforementioned circle is Pagan.)
Proof of my good taste:
Ingredient listing for Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar: Milk Chocolate (sugar, milk ingredients, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, soya lecithin, natural and artificial flavour).
Ingredient listing for a Neilson Jersey Milk chocolate bar: Condensed milk, sugar, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, butter oil, soya lecithin, natural flavour.
No wonder I prefer Jersey Milk bars. They don't add fake chocolate flavour to it. And what the heck is a "milk ingredient" anyway?
No, don't tell me. I don't want to know.
It's over. My acclaimed return to the stage of retail (a limited-run engagement) is finished. I'm back in retirement.
Body count: zero. I'm still alive; customers are still alive; no co-workers were harmed during the course of this encore performance.
I learned a lot from this past week. The primary thing, of course, is that I was absolutely right to leave retail. There were other things, too, though, that put a few worries to rest. For example, it confirmed that the reason I left sales after eleven years is completely due to the customers, and not the actual work of running a bookstore. It also confirmed that I enjoy teaching more than working retail (not a surprise, but nice to know). And this week also proved to me that no one resents my departure from the store, and everyone really enjoyed having me back. Okay, so I'm insecure: I was worried about what management and staff really thought of me. You know how you have those sort of acquaintances where you don't see them for a while and you run into them, and they're distant and you wonder if you were ever truly friends? I was tremendously afraid people would be distant, proving to me once and for all that I was nobody special. Everyone was thrilled to see me, however, sharing news and making lunch dates, and I frequently heard comments to the tune of, "It's so good to have you back."
After work I taught a two-hour introductory survey of divination methods last night, and it went just swimmingly. I knew I was teaching it, of course, and I had all my handwritten notes in a notebook (written on a GO train in July, if I remember correctly), but it didn't sink in until the end of the day on Wednesday thanks to the chance comment of a client. I realised that I hadn't truly prepared the class, and as this would be the first time I was teaching it, I needed something a little more substantial than three 5 x 7" pages of notes. So home I went, weary from a day of work, and spent my anniversary evening in front of the computer while my husband watched TV. My usual practice is to think about the new class for a few days, then sit down the day I am to teach it and type out the scribbled notes that have accumulated over those days of thought. Well, I completely forgot that I was working the day I'd be teaching this new workshop, and that I'd have to do it some other way, which unfortunately ended up with the two of us in separate rooms for two hours, and then falling into bed from exhaustion.
The workshop was a success, however, and I can add it to my roster of classes to offer again. I think perhaps another reason the knowledge that I had to prepare it slipped my mind can be attributed to the fact that my past three or four classes have been cancelled due to lack of registration. It makes sense; September is back-to-school month, and eighty percent of my class attendees are university students, who at this point are still settling in. The last thing on their minds is registering for extracurricular workshops! Looking at the registration book last night, though, I observed that October is already looking better, much to my pleasure.
I find teaching to be an odd experience. So much of it takes place out of the classroom, before the students even get there. When I develop a new workshop, I'm working in a vacuum; other than having a topic that has been generated due to observation of client interest in the store, there's nothing to indicate the outline at all. I decide the direction, what information to give, what information to discard, the format, the books and web sites to recommend for further research, the exercises, and so forth. Alone at home, out of context, I always create a workshop that seems flat and about half an hour long. In action, though, it always springs to life and ends up pushing the two-hour time frame. The sweetest part, however, is the unsolicited thanks I get from excited students at the end of a class. When I then ask if this is what they were looking for, if it was what they expected when they signed up, inevitably I get an enthusiastic confirmation, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. I always ask if they have any suggestions of information they think I should add, areas we didn't cover, which I think is an essential part of the teacher-student dynamic. It's a dialogue, after all; as one of my Liberal Arts professors used to say, pounding his fist on the long table about which twenty of us were sitting, "This is a seminar, not a lecture!" A teacher who doesn't listen to his/her students is a teacher who will quickly become unpopular and out of touch with the demographic to which s/he is contracted to communicate.
Enough about work. I intended to sleep in this morning, but after a week of getting up early here I am, awake and thinking. At least I'm in bed with my laptop. My plans for the day involve reading books, listening to music while doing nothing much, a bit of sewing, and maybe catching a bus downtown to stop by HMV to pick up a CD that I ordered in June which has finally arrived, and possibly that new shirt that I saw a week or two ago as well. Tonight, the company of good friends at a party; tomorrow, teaching in the morning and the memorial service for Andrès in the afternoon. And on Sunday, my husband and I will finally be able to appreciate one another's company and celebrate our wedding anniversary.
Sometime on Tuesday night, while I was raising cider in honour of MLG, my conductor passed away "peacefully", I am told, in the hospital.
Life can be very cruel, sometimes.
Glenn Gould! Glenn Gould! Glenn Gould!
Yes, it’s his seventieth anniversary. Most of you probably don’t know that I am a massive Gould fan. Those who do are probably scratching their heads and saying, “I thought she got over that. Isn’t this her third wedding anniversary? Shouldn’t she be blogging about marital bliss?”
My marital bliss today involves being thrilled that my significant other enjoys Gould as well, thanks to me. Our first official outing was to a Gouldian book launch at the NAC in Ottawa and a film festival on Gould’s work (duly reported to the F-Minor group!). And, of course, a couple of years later, completely by coincidence, we were married on September 25th: Glenn Gould’s birthday. (It meant that I had to miss the bi-annual international Gould conference that I had been planning on attending, but well, after weighing priorities, I think everything came out all right, don’t you?)
No, actually, my husband woke me up an hour before I had to be up and brought me breakfast in bed this morning, and a rose, and tea. Very sweet. I couldn’t eat it, mind you (I can’t eat until I’ve been awake for a good hour or so), but it was a lovely thought.
He left, I turned on the radio, and lo and behold, it’s all Glenn Gould, all day on CBC Radio Two!
The agonising and unfair reality of things, however, means that I am working at the store today and I can’t listen to it. Argh! They’re interviewing people he worked with, playing clips of interviews done with him, asking Canadian and international musicians and producers for their opinions of his work, and playing Gould, Gould, Gould… fourteen whole hours of broadcast. I’ll hear a couple of hours tonight, but I wish I could hear it all!
I discovered Glenn Gould by buying a copy of his 1955 Goldberg Variations in ye old Sam the Record Man downtown. The playing was rough, spilling over with emotion and drive, and I was hooked. I did research, bought academic analyses, acquired as many recordings by Gould as possible that wasn’t the work of twentieth century composers (Bach, Bach, Bach!), and ended up outlining and writing a third of a thesis on Gould’s dual use of performance/recording and the written word as communication about music, for he wrote many articles and many of his own liner notes as well. I was supervised by a professor of drama in the English department, who was excited about the project and foresaw an examination board made up of people from the music faculty and the English department. Everything was green-lighted… and then my advisor vanished from the face of the earth. He didn’t return e-mails, didn’t return phone messages, didn’t respond to the drafts I left for him in his mailbox. The project trickled to a stop as I lost confidence in myself and the thesis, and my life went to hell in a handbasket as my first wedding was called off and various other problems surfaced in my life. Ultimately the thesis was abandoned, replaced by my brilliant (yes, I reread it recently) thesis on Nostalgia in the British Academic Novel: Reconstructing the Past in Thatcher Britain (available on microfiche, by interlibrary loan, and somewhere federal in Ottawa where all theses written in Canada go to rest in glory). This means that I have the bare bones of a major Gould work somewhere on a floppy disk (I shudder… it could be anywhere).
In the meantime, I was an active member of F-Minor, a mailing list about Gould’s works. In fact, if I search my birth name on the Internet, the first thing that comes up is a post to F-Minor from the archive. I have in the past few years received e-mails from strangers asking me questions about Gould and Timothy Findley for school papers as a result of this archive still being up and available to the public, which is flattering and slightly time-warpish. I unsubscribed from the list not long after the thesis fell apart, being so very hurt by the callousness of the vanishing professor (who went on to retire and not inform several students he was supervising), but going back through it this morning has me convinced that I’ll re-subscribe, if it’s still active.
Since I can’t enjoy the festivities today, do it for me! Visit the official web site at http://glenngould.com/gg/; or listen to CBC Radio Two’s Variations on Glenn Gould via the airwaves or on the Internet (Radio Two, down on the lower left), even if it's just for a few minutes to get a sense of who this man was; and read about it on the CBC web site. I’m going to be late for work now because I blogged so long about a topic that I love, but since I’m not the one with the keys… as Bill would say, “neener, neener”!
I’m not sure where to begin.
I’m back at work this week – yes, retail; covering for another full-timer who’s on a well-deserved vacation. It was fun for about half a day. Then I started to get tired. I have thirty more hours of this, mostly with new part-timers I don’t know and have never worked with.
After work was my regular class that I teach on Monday nights. I was tired, but onwards I went. I wish things could have ended on a better note; I was trying to make them understand the individual steps in writing a research paper, and one student was seemingly being stubborn on purpose until we discovered that the term “research paper” meant something completely different to her than it meant to the twelve other students and the two professors. Misunderstanding cleared up. Frustrating at the time, though.
The I came home to two messages on my answering machine, one from my orchestra contact asking me to return his call, the other from a member of the LLO board asking me if I would help out backstage. (Nice of you to ask; snowball’s chance in hell.)
I called my orchestra contact back, and sat down, stunned, as he told me that our conductor had been in a rather bad road accident on Friday, had severe head trauma, was in the Montreal General Hospital where unsuccessful surgery had taken place to staunch internal cranial bleeding, and was being kept alive by machines. So our weekly rehearsal has been cancelled.
This is the man who founded the orchestra thirty-odd years ago. Every member of the orchestra has been called and advised of the situation. Of course the rehearsal’s been cancelled!
The situation is even bleaker than it first appears. The family expects to make a decision within the next couple of days as to whether or not those life-support machines should be kept functional. Andrès has just retired from teaching high school music to be there for his wife, who is battling terminal cancer. After a promising spring she has taken a turn for the worse, and now she has just been transferred to the Montreal General to be with her husband. Family is being summoned from his native country of Latvia and other places of residence. Evidently, things don’t look good all around.
I don’t know Andrès other than as my conductor for a single year of orchestra. He has a sense of humour, a true love for music, the ability to communicate his ideas and visions, to corral forty adults of various levels of competence and with them create a thing of beauty. He taught years and years of string students at Lindsay Place High School. When I saw him last on Wednesday, he was in a wonderful mood.
The strangeness of knowing that he’s now lying somewhere hooked up to monitors and IV drips and pumps and tubes is unreal. It’s so difficult to maintain two opposing realities in the mind: that you expect upon extrapolating from the last time you encountered someone, and the reality that someone has told you which completely contradicts it. I suppose the necessity for closure is directly proportional to how well you know the individual in question. I’ve only known Andres for a year, despite the joy he’s brought me and the work I’ve done for him to meet the standards he’s set. My stunned feelings must pale next to those of the orchestra members how have worked with him longer than I, and to those of his already stressed family. I’m angry at the senseless tragedy; all I can do is pray, and I’ve been doing it since I heard the news. If he’s meant to live, let it be with peace and no pain, with health and positivity. May his doctors’ minds be clear, their hands steady, their acts inspired. If he is meant to die, then let him pass gently, with no further trauma, and may his family be spared further agony. He is an admirable man. Why did this have to happen?
This reminds me that if I walk away from someone in anger, or even indifference, there may not be another opportunity to erase that final image I’ll hold in my mind of them ever afterwards. Like my cats and our dog, he might not be there next time our orchestra gathers. My contact assures me that we’ll likely go on, although Andrès was our heart. Perhaps we will; he wouldn’t want the orchestra to dissolve. Music is eternal, although people who create it are not. It will be strange, and it will be different; but for me, it will be a way to balance the senseless and tragic loss of life, if it is indeed confirmed that there must be loss of life. For every destruction, there must be creation, after all.
My stunning Hallowe’en costume has been hanging up for a few weeks now, and yes, just as I had hoped, I’ve been looking at it and loving it and anticipating Hallowe’en with glee.
There’s just one thing. The next step involves making metre-long slices in the existing costume. Two of them.
It’s so pretty, and it looks so damned drop-jaw good on me. I’m petrified to ruin it, quite frankly. These two metre-long slices would really make the costume though.
S’okay. I have five weeks to work up the courage to do it. Well, four, because next week is chock-a-block full of work and teaching and such things. Three, actually, because I’d need a week to recover from the heart-stopping knowledge that I’ve committed hara-kari on a costume that’s taken me hours to get to this almost-perfect point. Now that I think about it, it’s only two weeks, since I’ll need a week to do the finicky final touches after I’ve hacked it apart, and then a week to rest and like it again while recovering.
Oh please, gods, let this work.
I feel the sudden urge to go fetal.
Has it ever happened that you casually glance out the window and you don't see any cars go by, or people on the street, or anyone moving in the dep across the way, or dogs in the park dog-run, and wonder if, just maybe, you missed the end of the world?
I thought I’d blog something positive, seeing as how when I scan past entries I notice that I’ve been blogging bad news more often than not. I’ve been rather glum recently.
So! I had orchestra again last night, and there was new music waiting for us: Handel’s Toccata and Fugue in F (I think; I might be misremembering the key signature). There were only two copies of the cello part, and four cellists, so I shared with Sean (of the infamous Canada Day concert shared stand). Now, when I share music, I end up squinting to my left, and I get dizzy. Sure enough, I couldn’t follow correctly, and rapidly became alarmingly nauseous. I stopped trying to play, and eventually laid my cello down quietly, stood up, left the stage, and sat outside in the cool fresh air, breathing deeply. I had a flash of “why am I bothering, I’ll never do this right” which surfaces every once in a while, ignored it, and eventually went back inside, figuring that if it got worse I’d just pack up and go home. I sat and followed the music until we switched to the Mendelssohn symphony, when I pulled my own stand forward and opened my own music. “Oh,” said Sean, “you don’t want to share mine?” “No, but thanks,” I said politely, “I’ll use mine, it has all my marks on it anyway.”
Now, the conductor has told us a few times now that this is a difficult symphony, and I’m still waiting for that proverbial piano to fall, because I’m having a ball with it. So we started, and every once in a while Sean or my old stand partner Walter (who now sits in the second chair, at the seemingly casual request of our principal cellist which everyone in the cello section knows is a veiled promotion and the mark of favour) would check on me: “Are you feeling okay? Do you need air? Water?” No, I was fine, I told them, my mind was somewhere else now, and so long as I didn’t think about my stomach I’d be all right.
I proceeded to have a fantastic night, first with the opening movement of the Mendelssohn symphony, then for the last ten minutes of rehearsal during the Rossini overture we’re doing. I truly adore these new strings; I do need a softer rosin, and I had to stand up and retune them (via the pegs, not the fine tuners) every twenty minutes or so as they stretch, but all in all, it went spectacularly well. So well, in fact, that time flew, and I wasn’t ready for the evening to come to an end. (I have never, ever understood why people are in such a hurry to leave something they do for fun.)
As I was packing up, Walter turned around with a smile and said, “You’ve been practicing; I can tell. Having the free time to do it is really showing. Soon you’ll be in my chair!”
Well, well, well. I think I must have glowed. “I do have the time, and the headspace,” I agreed, ‘but these new strings have something to do with it as well, I’m sure. Thank you.”
My intonation sounds more precise, my overall tone sounds more cohesive, and the sound in general is clearer, the bow moves more easily and articulation just seems to be more present than it did before. Having someone else notice really did wonders for my confidence. Maybe it’s the new bridge; maybe it’s the still-new bow; maybe it’s the new strings; maybe it’s all of them, plus me.
Hmm. Just looking at that list makes me add up how much I’ve spent on upgrading my instrument and accessories over the past nine months and wince a little bit – just a little bit. It’s cheaper than buying a new instrument, after all. And now that it’s all done, I don’t need to worry for a while.
I do sound better, and that I can even tell shows me how much I’ve improved over the past year. I love playing with these new strings, because I love the sound. Loving to play is a good thing, because I’ll play even more. And the more I play, the better I get. What a nice change from the vicious circles I usually get caught up in. What would I call this – an auspicious circle? Whatever the term, I’m thankful for it, and intend to keep on enjoying it, as well.
Oh dear. Cat trouble all around, it seems.
Pursuant to the loss of the elderly Sir Grey, my mother has decided to reserve another Maine Coon kitten. Her reasoning, which I fully agree with, is that no animal as social as a Maine Coon should be solitary, and they had reserved him months ago expecting the little guy to have a dog and a cat to romp with. An empty house is unfair. So, Mum has decided to go ahead and reserve a silver Maine Coon from the same breeder, despite my father’s waffling (and if he finds out via my blog, I do apologise, but you had at least two days to tell him, Mum). This one’s ETA is December, so Seamus will only have three months on his own. (Yes, three months; when did it get to be three months to the end of the year?)
On top of that, Scarlet has e-mailed to inform me that the feral cat who produced the litter of kittens we’ve been nursing tested positive for feline immunodeficiency virus, which means that it might have been passed to the kittens in utero or via the mother’s milk. There’s no way to tell until they’re tested after four months old, since they can still possess a sort of trace phantom FIV from contact with the mother until that age. The main problem is that an FIV positive cat can’t be in contact with an FIV negative cat, or the virus can be passed along.
This is a problem, of course, since Scarlet was hoping to have all these cats gone to good homes as soon as possible, so she could have her office back to normal. If we can’t mix these cats with her other non-FIV household cats… well, you see the problem. It also means that she has to keep the kittens till they’re four months old and tested to ascertain their FIV status, because it would be irresponsible to pass a potentially FIV-positive cat along to a household with non-FIV cats.
There are irresponsible people out there, of course. We are not members of that particular demographic. So these cats will stay at home for two extra months, and once we’ve found out whether they’re FIV positive or negative, we’ll be able to place them properly.
Oh dear, indeed.
I heard today that my parents lost the last pet I’d grown up with. That makes all three within one year.
You have to wonder about the skewed idea of justice that the world has. Last year, it was our female cat Bo’sun, of lung cancer. Last month it was our dog Megan, also of cancer. Yesterday, they put down our cat Grey, of Cushing’s disease. These were animals who were deeply loved, and well-cared for in every sense of the word, who still developed fatal diseases. And everywhere, there are strays and feral dogs and cats, scraping out a living on the streets and in the wild, living to an astonishingly old age.
My parents aren’t completely alone; they brought their new Maine Coon kitten home last week, of course. When I go down at Thanksgiving, though, there won’t be a dog bouncing at the front door when I come in, or a familiar thin hyper-purring cat climbing into my lap when I sit at the kitchen table.
Why do things move so fast? Do you ever get the sense that the world is moving inexorably on, and you’re just standing there, bewildered, not knowing how to keep up? That things are changing, and you don’t know how to make them stop, even just for a little while?
I’m upset about Grey, of course; I’m upset for my parents, too. More than anything else, though, I feel like there’s been a link disrupted to my life as a teenager, when I still lived with my parents. I’ve lived on my own for ten and a half years, but only now do I really feel like I can’t go back in quite the same way. Our family pets have always played huge roles in our lives, and this particular set of three was around for about twelve years. Every time I went to visit my parents, there they were, waiting for me along with my mum and dad. And now, it’s just not going to be the same. At all.
Life goes on, of course, the way it does when anyone you love dies. You adjust. Sometimes, though, when I get really upset about the death of a pet, I wonder why we do it to ourselves; why we bring these little fuzzy things into our homes for a decade and integrate them into our hearts and lives to such an extent if we know they’re only going to go away some day, leaving us lonely and in pain. Of course, you can say the same thing about friends, or lovers, and some people do. They don’t let anyone close, brood over the past betrayals, and end up bitter, lonely individuals. I think, though, that we seek animal companionship for the same reason we reach out over and over to men and women: for love, for warmth, for interaction with another intelligence. To provide care and support; to receive those same things in return, to a varied degree. There have been times I have cried, and my cats have actively sought to comfort me; times I have been very ill, and they have stayed with me. When I am happy, they share that with me as well.
So we do it repeatedly; we open our hearts to these creatures who cannot share our seven to nine decades of life, because even those ten or fifteen precious years count for something. The pain is worth it.
At least, so it seems while you still have the comfort of their warmth and love, and that pain is still only a vague future. When tomorrow becomes today, and you cry, and protest the injustice, the story reads quite differently. And, as always, I wish I could rewrite the ending, so that everyone could live happily ever after.
I have now re-strung my cello with a full set of Eudoxa strings, and the wound gut sounds sooooo mellow. I adore it.
There’s just one problem. The silver or aluminium winding is so soft that my bow is having difficulty catching it. I put more rosin on the hair, but it’s still slipping a bit. It will improve as more rosin transfers to the strings as well, but I’m starting to wonder if buying softer rosin might be the way to go. There’s a deliciously dreamy rosin that my old stand partner uses, but it’s about thirty-six dollars a cake, and I just bought a total of a hundred and sixty dollars worth of new strings over the past week. Maybe if I have a really successful workshop this week, I’ll use some of that money and try either Eudoxa rosin (to match the strings, and much less expensive at $12 a cake!) or the Leibenzeller. Rosin does last for years, though, unless you drop it and it shatters. I use Hill light at the moment, and it was fine for the Aricores, but hmmm.
The cello is lying on the floor in the living room at the moment. I wander in and tighten the pegs every half-hour or so. Honestly, they’re losing between three-quarters of and a whole tone every thirty minutes. They really, really need to stretch.
Found on Neil Gaiman's blog (and why the hell haven't I linked it before?): this question from a fan.
1. When you decided on becoming a Writer, did you have trouble on deciding what type of novels you were going to write, for example you thought that maybe you were a science fiction writer, or a modern fiction writer. Or have all of your stories always been dark and macabre?
Lovely.
Curses. The rain has ceased. It's brightening up out there.
No! I want my husband to come home! Rain, damn you! Rain!
Hmm.
Opera. Good name. Relatively easy, intuitive interface.
Blogger does not like it. Not at all.
On to more experimentation.
Downloaded and installed Opera this morning. I found this in the user agreement:
You acknowledge that the software is not intended for use in (1) on-line control of aircraft, air traffic, aircraft navigation or aircraft communications; or (2) in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.
Well, gosh. What did I download this for, then?
I don’t know what scares me more: the fact that they feel this warning must be issued, or that (according to recent market percentages) over 90% of people will turn to IE instead, being denied the use of Opera for these particular purposes.
Woke up this morning to a dark, dark sky.
"Maybe it will rain," I said.
"Maybe," said my husband. "But I doubt it."
"Maybe it will rain so you can come home and we can run about downtown this afternoon, assuming the bank unfreezes my account," I said.
"No," my husband said morosely. "It's just going to play with our minds."
He left for work. I watched the sky for a bit. It really was much too dark to just be overcast.
It raineth. Oh, ye of little faith.
Good gods.
We have a Friday the thirteenth this week.
This will be the first Friday the thirteenth I have not been called at work by CJAD to be interviewed on the radio. (I used to really disappoint radio hosts, since my whole approach was, "You know we're just normal people who revere nature and believe in a deity concept that embodies male and female energy, right?") I will not be speaking on the origins of the superstition, or superstition in general. or what it means to a witch, or the Pagan community in general
This is the dance of someone who doesn't care.
La la la!
New favourite place on earth: Betjeman & Barton, the tea emporium at 5131 Sherbrooke in Westmount. Milk-gallon sized tins of loose tea across the back wall of the shop. Teapots and cups in all shapes and sizes. Preserves and sugars and chocolates to go with your tea. Cosies. Strainers. Tea balls. And as soon as you walk in the door, the scent of dry tea leaves in the air.
Heaven, I tell you.
Married three years and I still feel a flush of excitement when I call a gentleman to firm up a coffee date. Sheesh. Some habits never die.
Last night was the first orchestra meeting of the year. I brought along my oldest friend who plays as many instruments as she has fingers (okay, perhaps I exaggerate; as many instruments as she has fingers on one hand, then). It was terrific. I knew I'd missed it, but when we picked up our first piece of sheet music and played the first phrase, I felt like I'd slipped back into a set of well-broken-in shoes and a comfy but still attractive sweater.
I replaced that A string with the Eudoxa A, and boys and girls, I'm in love. I'm off to pick up the rest of the set today after coffee. I mean, wow. Talk about a sultry and mellow voice! It does blend well with the three Aricores I still have on the cello (which do need to be replaced), but I can just imagine the deep, rich, dark sound that all of them together will produce... mmmm.
Okay, I've snapped out of that lovely little reverie. Ceri was over when I unstrung the old A and put the new one on the other day; "Oooh," she said, "I'm listening to you play the cello!" as I plucked the string in order to tune it. It made me laugh. What wasn't as amusing was the amount of stretching this string needed before it became playable. If I had to estimate, I'd say it has stretched a full two inches so far, and while it's slowed down, I know I'll have to tune it up again late this afternoon. Gut is very sensitive. It also doesn't last as long, but seeing as how my Aricores lasted two or three years, and a yearly replacement is recommended for strings, I've done very well so far.
There's something else I have to mention: the local riot revolving around protesting the scheduled appearance of former PM of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu at my alma mater Concordia University.
Flying in the face of the basic respect for open discourse that a true university is supposed to represent, the violent crowd prevented Israel's former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking on campus. If not powerfully and clearly addressed over time, this act will register the breakdown of academic freedom at a major Canadian institution of higher learning. .
Go me. Two degrees at an academic institution rapidly becoming known as a joke.
There are degrees of expression, people. Yes, you have the freedom to protest. The man also has the freedom to speak. Why is it that every protest at Concordia has to turn into a violent uprising costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up after? And why is it that stopping a statesman from speaking is considered a victory for oppressed people across the globe? How does violent protest make a persuasive case? Fear and pain and destruction are threats to keep people in line, not intelligent arguments calculated to make a case for your beliefs. Force a man to do something, and he resents it. Let his work it out by thinking about it and making his own decision,and he's yours. And you look like less of an idiot.
What's the point of echoing the mindless violence in the Middle East? It's not working over there; it's certaonly not going to work here in North America. We're in Canada, for the gods' sakes.
It's shameful. That we in North America cannot conduct a civil lecture and allow both sides of a story to be told is nothing less than shameful.
Frederick Krantz, an historian and a teacher at Concordia for thirty-three years (and a teacher at the Liberal Arts College while I studied Western Civilization there) has written a very insightful and thought-provoking article about the narrow-mindedness which resulted in the riot on Monday which is a good read.
In the meantime, I am shocked and disappointed that any Canadian student body cannot conduct itself with honour and civility. As soon as you resort to violence, you've ensured a loss of respect for your beliefs. I'm embarrassed; I am ashamed that the student body of the educational instituation that I spent ten years a part of repeatedly illustrates that they are nothing more than bullies attempting to make everyone believe the same thing they do by committing violent acts. Unfortunately, I'm not the one who should be feeling this way. And I highly doubt that the mindless protesters are feeling anything but injured and righteous about their acts on Monday afternoon.
I have just spent half an hour bathing four kittens.
Damn, it was cute.
These cats will never be afraid of water. I feel as if I have accomplished something tremendous.
Was I the only person on the planet who didn't watch Lathe of Heaven on TV last night? I woke up this morning to half a dozen e-mails in my in-box either ranting or raving about it. Please tell me someone taped it so I can figure out what the fuss was about.
I had a nightmare this morning and woke up in a jolt of freezing terror around five, and lay there shaking till six when my husband got up. Bad dreams are so frustrating; your logical mind says, "Okay, car, knife, bad man, night, these things are highly unlikely to happen, it was just a dream," but your system is still stuck in that shadow fight-or-flight a nightmare produces. I call it the shadow version because with real fight-and-flight, you can actively shake the tremors and cold sweats and pounding heart. Shadow fight-and-flight is an echo sort of reaction that happens while you're asleep, and it lingers insidiously until your husband wakes up and rubs your back and brings you cats to scare away the bad stuff with purrs. I had good dreams too, although most had a chorus of invisible monks breaking into a chant of "Esca-flowne" all over the place, a direct result of watching the first Escaflowne DVD last night. Escaflowne is my very first foray into the world of animé, and I can say at the very least the score is having some sort of effect on me, evidently. Nothing like invisible monks chanting the name of a giant robot as a dream soundtrack to really highlight the ludicrous aspect to my quality dream-time.
My parents are back from their annual holiday drive into the States, and they've picked up their new four-month-old kitten friend, who is a Maine Coon. His name is Seamus, and he's following them around a lot. Their established old cat is not amused. So now my mother and I get to exchange kitten stories. And speaking of kittens, they're getting nice and plump, and Nix is filling out nicely. As of yesterday their milk formula was blended with a spoon of pablum, so it's now like a very thin gruel, and they're a bit upset. When you're five inches long, a week is forever, so when the viscosity of their food alters once weekly, it must come as a real shock to their little kitten brains.
While going through my filing cabinet looking for a label I came across a picture taken at my one and only public cello recital. Ceri's right; my cello is huge next to me. For everyone who is waiting with bated breath to know what my string decision will be, I'm going to try a Eudoxa A string, since that's the crucial replacement and the string I always have the most trouble with sound-wise, and if it sounds horrible then I'll order a set of Aricores. If it doesn't, then I'll try a D string too, and so forth.
I went out yesterday and wandered around downtown a bit. I went into Paragraphe, and wondered why on earth I don't do it more often. It's just around the corner from Indigo, after all, and it stocks all the books I like, and is nicer, and an independent, too. (Let's never mind the fact that the owners sold out to become the directors of the distribution company owned in majority by Chapters a few years ago; water under the bridge and all that.) I suddenly thought that I ought to be reading the type of book I'm writing, to get a feel for what was being published. And then, something that an old customer who was an author from the F/SF shop told me once drifted across my mind: this counts as research. Save the receipts.
Hmm. I buy books anyway. If it doesn't work come tax-time, I haven't lost anything. Woo-hoo! So I bought Adam Davies' debut novel The Frog King, which was one of those brilliant debuts last season. It began really well, then descended a bit into maudlin self-abuse. Still better than some of the stuff out there. Just finished it this morning. Lesson learned: does your protagonist really have to hit rock bottom in an unpleasant way for your story to be told? Is your audience going to come away from the novel with an unpleasant taste in their mouths? If so, is it ultimately key to the plot? I didn't think so in this case, so my lesson note reads: put your protagonist through symbolic hell. Forcing your audience to read every little bit of ick and dredge before your protagonist sees a scrap of blue sky drags your tale down.
I also picked up Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic, which is rather amusing because the cover is pink, and my ex-colleagues know how much I foam at the mouth when I see a pink or purple book. (Pink or purple pages and/or fonts are even worse.) Mind you, that's in the New Age sort of book, so maybe this slipped past my pink radar because it was in the Literature section.
I made tons of notes on what other books I would buy when I went back, too. It's been ages since I got excited about books like this. I think it's because for the first time in eleven years, I don't work at a bookstore, so I don't have my surprises spoiled for me by ordering from forthcoming catalogues. It also has to do with the style of book Paragraphe stocks. I don't have to wade through crap, the way I do at a chain store. It's all quality stuff. Call me elitist, I don't care. Label me; just let me have good books.
Paragraphe has a web site, so I thought I could start linking the books I talk about. I haven't before because I refuse to funnel money into a Canadian chain that doesn't need it (I'm a staunch supporter of independant booksellers, and you should be too), let alone an American company (Bleah! Amazon sucks! Okay, they have a good review system, I check them out for reviews all the time; and they have tempting shipping deals, but they're American! So is the Amazon.ca site - Canadian shipping address, owned by a Seattle company! Don't get suckered! Support your own economy - please!) (Okay, rant over.) So I checked the Paragraphe site this morning. Alas, it is counter-intuitive, doesn't list all their books, doesn't have a page per title describing it, etcetera. Still, it's an excellent place in person, which is what you want when you're looking for a good bookstore anyway. More nifty Montreal bookstores you might not know about: The Double Hook on Greene, which deals exclusively in Canadiana, and Nicholas Hoare, also on Greene (with another location in the basement of Ogilvy's if you're feeling particularly swanky someday). Anyone else have a favourite?
For everyone who has been asking, Friday night went rather badly – I choked, I dropped lines, I wobbled. As I expected, I didn’t get the part. Thoughtful condolence gifts of dinner, flowers, expensive chocolates etc are always appreciated.
In fact, only one person out of the truckload of excellently qualified friends who also auditioned for various roles was cast. Which leads me to wonder, who the heck is in this show?
The casting chairman who called me was evidently rather distressed about the state of things, for he chatted with me for a few minutes about how he’d shown the committee clips he’d videotaped the past year of my vocal and stage work, and tried in every way possible to get me to come back. He also told me that the committee had authorised him to offer me an understudy role of the smallest part in the show, which is out of my range. And for a moment, I balanced between rage and laughing; I finally chose to laugh. He asked my reasons why I wasn’t coming back at all, and I told him frankly that I had been extremely frustrated last year by the lack of effort put into the show by the chorus, and that I felt as if I had been pulling more than my fair share of weight (apart from understudying two other roles and learning three different sets of blocking, I mean). The bickering, the attitudes, and the lack of professionalism amongst the chorus members irritated me to a point that it’s not worth going back. (In retrospect, being in the chorus last year was supposed to help me get a role this year, so technically I could count last year as a loss. I’m not going to think about that too hard.) The only two really bitter things about this are (a) that I won’t be working with Rob on-stage again, and (b) that Phoebe was the second of the two G&S roles I’ve ever actively wanted to sing (the first was Iolanthe, and if you’ve known me for over three years you know the nasty story behind that one too).
I was really upset on Friday night. I hate auditions because they suggest that it’s the best I can do, which I (and the casting committee) know damn well is not true. Some people audition better than others, and then (Iolanthe being a case in point) don’t improve through rehearsal. I think the shame and embarrassment I feel about audition failure revolves around the suggestion that I can’t do better, past proof to the contrary. I'm also trying to figure out why my auditions get worse as I get older and gather more experience singing. (I can trace the beginning of the end to being in a relationship with my husband, actually - I haven't succeeded in an audition since we began courting.) The dialogue part of the audition, however, was fantastic, a fact with which I’m soothing my injured soul. This audition has shown me that it’s time to go back to straight theatre. As much as I love singing, and as good as I am at it, I’m not trained, nor do I have a piano or a teacher to work on my audition pieces with me, as other candidates do; I’m feeling it out and hoping I do it right, doing it by instinct. Time to stop agonising and just do what I’m good at for a while. So, all you theatre people out there – drop me a line and let me know when auditions pop up! I do have fourteen years of varied stage experience, after all (and I'm not counting high school).
The good part: I can re-join my book club (and read The Princess Bride by Tuesday – no problem), and have Fridays free for socialising and what-not (with all those friends who also won’t be in the show!). Silver lining.
Okay, I'm in a educational mood this morning. I'm also going to geek out on you. Hold tight.
Since most of you have never (and likely will never!) hear me mess about alone with the cello, you can hear the individual strings and basic sounds here. (If you're curious about the physical construction of the cello, and how it all goes together, check out this exploded print of a cello.) The A string is the thinnest, the highest, and the one that breaks the most often because it's under the most pressure. The C string is the lowest, and it's a heavy string. To give you an idea of the tension on each string, a medium-gauge A string will place about 35 lbs of pressure on the cello, a D string will press around 32 lbs, a G string will press about 29 lbs, and a C string will press about 28 lbs. Go ahead, add it all up and marvel at the feat of engineering that keeps a curved box of thin wood encasing about six inches of air from exploding into matchwood.
My particular instrument is picky about what A string goes on it. Most brands that I've tried sound sharp (as in painfully hitting your ear, leaping out when the other three strings sound nice and warm, not as opposed to flat) and a bit nasal. I chose Pirastro Aricores last time, a perlon core aluminum and silver-wrapped string, and the whole set sounded pretty impressive. They have a nice dark sound that I enjoy a lot. They've stood up well, too.
Hmm. More background necessary, methinks. String instruments used to be strung with gut, which produces a very soft warm sound. Obviously with larger concert halls and most recording sessions we can't do that any more, and gut is horribly unstable in humid climates (like, well, Montreal). So strings diverged, and now can roughly be split into two categories: synthetic cores, which sound warmer and softer, and steel cores, which sound brighter and more brilliant. I have an innate fear of being heard, and besides, I like the warmer tones, so I opt for synthetic cores. Perlon is one such core. People still use gut, of course, it's just less reliable. In fact, there's a couple of brands from Pirastro string that uses a real gut core and winds it with aluminum (for the two higher strings) and silver (for the two deeper strings). On top of materials used in composition, there's the whole problem of what grade to use: light, medium or heavy. (I usually stick with medium; nice, safe, middle of the road.)
I've tried Thomastik Dominant strings (icky A strings that are wound with a flat ribbon of chrome that breaks all the time and slithers down the Perlon core), Larsen strings (swanky steel strings that sounded lifeless on my cello), a sleek steel Jargar A string that snapped three times in two weeks, a Thomastik Precision that wasn't very memorable, and now the Aricores. The staff member at Shar tried to talk me out of synthetic core Pirastro Aricores and into steel core D'Addario Helicores, but mindful of my pocketbook I held out for the Aricores. I was rather smug when he'd strung it, played it and admitted my victory; they sounded terrific.
Now, I could order a set of Aricores from Toronto, but I don't feel like it. I like Wilder & Davis, and darn it all, I want to support them. They don't sell Aricores. So.... I embark again upon the Great String Adventure. I'd love to try a wound gut string; I think it would be very interesting. They sell Pirastro Eudoxas, which would set me back around $185. If I want to keep on with a synthetic core, a set of Pirastro Obligatos is $220, but I suppose I could put the less expensive Thomastik Dominants on the G and C (a C string that costs $44 is easier to justify than one that costs $70), and use the Obligatos on the A and D. I really would rather not use Dominants again, though. Or, I can just buy one Eudoxa at a time, starting with the A string. I'd jump at Pirastro Gold, which like the Eudoxa is aluminum or silver-wrapped gut and is less expensive, but Wilder & Davis doesn't stock it.
Selecting strings is kind of like a puzzle; you can mix and blend brands, according to your instrument's peculiarities and you pocketbook, or you opt for a set where each string is designed to complement the others. It's a hit and miss sort of enterprise, though. You can hit on a brilliant combo, or it can fizzle. Price desn't seem to really indicate quality very well; those three Jargar strings that snapped were quite expensive and enjoy an excellent reputation overall (although other cellists have indicated that they've had a similar problem with thse particular A strings). A sentence of description is hard to go by too; anything that uses the words "loud" or "brilliant" usually get crossed off my list right away. I want a mellow, rich, dark sound. From the research I've done this morning, it looks like Eudoxas are my pick if I want to support my local luthier of choice (and they have a string sale on right now, so I'd save around $16 off the set which would basically save me the taxes and bring my cost down to about $167). I could always order a new set of Aricores ($99) or a set of Golds ($129) from Toronto (shipping is free, after all, and I wouldn't pay PST).
Argh. Decisions, decisions.
I have my cello back again!
I met Ceri for dinner and sangria, and then we took the metro up to Mont-Royal and walked down St Denis (mistake, mistake, mistake - look, there's Valet de Coeur, let's look at miniatures. Look, there's Excalibor, and the new Fall line is out, ooh, microsuede... no! No! Must pick up cello!)
We got there, and I gave the young man my name and claim sheet (different anxious young man - this one was Anglophone); he brought it in from the back, and I experienced the expected "Yay!" feeling, but something else, too. I saw my cello almost as if it were the first time... and it was, well, beautiful. Aesthetically attractive, I mean. I've always slightly regretted the fact that the varnish is orangey, instead of more brown or red. Not that the colour matters, of course; it's the sound that you're focused on, after all. When he carried it out, though, I knew it was mine right away (I've always been slightly afraid that if someone had a score of cellos, I wouldn't be able to pick mine out by sight alone). Then, of course, I was swamped by the "Mine! Mine!" feeling, and he gave it to me, and all I wanted to do was hug it.
"It's so small!" said Ceri.
"Well, that would be because I don't have the endpin out," I said. The endpin adds a good foot to the length of the instrument.
"And you're not sitting down," Ceri said with a grin, "That makes a big difference too. Usually it looks huge next to you."
There was a gentleman there with a bike helmet who had been asking about violin rental while we'd waited, and he was still there as I put my cello away in the case. "That's a cello?" he asked, partly to me, partly to the young man. "My middle son wants to play the cello, but we can't seem to find a teacher."
Now, I just so happened to have a slip of paper in my back pocket with the name and number of a cello teacher on it, which I had picked up in another music store a couple of hours earlier. I pulled it out and gave it to him; he needed it more than I did. I don't remember what I said to him, really, only that if a child of ten is asking for lessons on a string instrument, for God's sake, give him lessons. Music can only enrich, and the whole process of learning to read and play music trains a different part of the brain than does regular reading. What I didn't say aloud was that it was refreshing to find a child who wanted music lessons, instead of feeling like s/he'd been forced into it. Cultivate that, says I.
So I got home and opened the case and oooh, the new bridge is twice as thick and arched higher and my strings rest on it beautifully, and it's shaped, they actually sanded parts away in places for the more delicate strings to resonate better, and the sound is fantastic. If I seem a over-excited, you should have seen my last bridge - it was half this thick, only slightly rounded, and certainly not shaped so attentively or with consideration for the individual instrument. But then, this only confirms my general not-impressed-ness with Jules St-Michel, and increases my admiration for Wilder & Davis.
The luthier made a note on the work report that my A string is beginning to unravel as well, but I knew that already. It needs to be replaced before orchestra begins. Actually, all the strings are two years old (possibly three, goodness) and they saw more playing last year than I usually do, so they technically should all be replaced. My poor husband last night nearly choked when he asked how much an A string would cost, and I told him in the neighbourhood of thirty dollars. Good thing I didn't tell him that C strings go for about fifty or sixty. A full set will cost between one hundred and one hundred and seventy. Guess I know what I'm doing with my next EI cheque...
Oh, good grief.
There's an Official Hobbit Day. It's September 22nd.
See, I'm twitching again....
Found in the middle of a page on making bath bombs (fizzy bath salts, guys, not - never mind. It's a girl thing, okay?):
Ummm.. what else? Don't store the bombs in metal because the of the corrosive properties of the salt, avoid storing them in plastic zip-loc type bags or cellophane, I have heard reports that the plastic eats the scents, and a few mysterious reports of lavender essential oil going bad when stored in cellophane, and try to store them either sealed or in a dry area. Don't use them if they look or smell funny, don't run with scissors, call your mother.
So, how about that letter from Captain James Cook that's been found in the back of someone's picture frame?
1777 is the year in which they believe it to be written, at the end of his three-year journey to chart Australia and its environs. Of course, there being no such thing as air mail or any kind of international postal service in existence at the time, the only way for a letter to get back from a seagoing vessel was for it to be handed to a fishing boat or a passing merchant ship headed in the other direction, and to pray that it eventually reache England's shores. Which, when you think about it, is pretty much throwing your trust into the hands and words of a stranger.
It actually worked. The letter got to England.
Now, the thing that blows me away is the fact that we couldn't do this today. Okay, if a stranger handed me a letter and said, "Please, could you post this?", I'd probably say, "Sure," and drop it in the nearest box and forget about it (I know, I know, anthrax scares and fingerprints to the contrary). But if a stranger in a foreign country came up to me and said, "Please, can you carry this back to England for me?", chances are good I'd say, "Er, no, sorry." Chances are good, in fact, that most people would say the same thing.
The other thing which amuses me about this is that the BBC quotes someones as comparing Cook's return to James T Kirk's return from his five-year mission with the Enterprise. Even Tom Allen, the host of CBC Radio Two's Music & Company, compared the miracle of the letter reaching England to an Earth-bound letter from Kirk passed to some independent starship while on a far-flung planetary mission. Star Trek is all about idealism in the future. So our views of this letter from Cook are caught between nostalgia for the past on one side, and idealism about the future on the other.
Ain't historical (and pop cultural) parallax grand?
I'm sure future generations will use similes like, "It's about as amazing as someone three feet high carrying a Ring of Power through the entire lands of Middle-Earth and surviving the trilogy." Ooh, look at that; I'm twitching.
I sat down between kitten-nursing yesterday and whipped off three pages of the Great Canadian Novel.
The ease with which I do this is beginning to worry me. (I know, I know - remove major sources of stress and I'll instinctively create something new to obsess me.) How can I be writing something meaningful if I'm not trying?
Oh, wait - this is connected to the work-ethic thing that says, "If it doesn't hurt, you're not growing", isn't it? Always reminds me of that wonderful Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin's pretending to be his dad and says, "Go to your room! Being miserable builds character!"
I do honestly worry sometimes, though, that because I don't seem to be putting a lot of work into my writing, it's useless. And yet, I'll take this ease over the seven or so years of writer's block I had, thanks very much. I'm not complaining that things are flowing, I'm just... concerned. Okay, yes, it's a first draft ("This is your first draft?" Ceri says, looking up from my weekly sheets with big round eyes), and I can always "work" on it later, where I will no doubt cry and moan and tear my hair. (Y'know, just as an irritating aside, I used to get A minuses on the papers I used to write and hand in without rewriting. When I finally caught on to the idea of rewriting and improving a first draft, I still got A minuses.)
I love drinking tea out of a glass cup.
I can tell it's going to be a day of simple pleasures.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating: I love hearing music I've played in concert on the radio. Particularly the fourth movement to Beethoven's second symphony. I get all excited. Small things amuse, I know.
I also became strangely excited when I realised that it was so darned cold in the office this morning that I had to go put socks on. After a summer of bare feet, it Meant Something.
The computer finally defragged, on the fourth go-round. I can't see that it's any quicker, but it sure moved stuff around. This morning I installed a pop-up ad blocker, which works beautifully - so well, in fact, that I couldn't get the YACCS comments boxes to come up on a blog this morning. Oh, right - they're pop-up windows. Duh. Must hold Ctrl down while clicking on link. Small price to pay, though.
I was looking out the window this morning, waiting for my tea to steep, and I saw a man walk casually into the depanneur across from us. He had a ball cap on and a messenger-style bag over his shoulder, and wore a denim button-down shirt. It was around seven-fifteen, and all of a sudden I got hit by a wave of back-to-schoolness. For a moment, I, too, wished I had somewhere to be, to dress up and pack my bag and leave the house for, walking down the street early in the morning, when the light is still clear and cool, and on your way to the bus stop, you can swing by the dep for an orange juice and maybe a granola bar.
Only for a moment, though. Then I came back into the office with my tea, sat down, and looked at my list of work things I had drafted for today, with CBC Radio Two on behind me, with cats chasing one another around the apartment, and torn jeans and a summer sweater on.
Birdie gone home. The bird staff at Nature checked their files for the leg band number, found who had bought it, and called him; he called us around seven-forty-five, desperately glad someone had found her. She had flown out the door on Sunday, and had caught him by surprise since her wings had been clipped not long ago. When we dropped her off tonight, he couldn't stop thanking us. I'm a little puzzled; if someone had found one of my lost pets, I'd want her back as soon as possible. We were just doing what we hope someone else would do for us.
Anyway, happy ending to an adventure. Man and little girl thrilled their bird came home; husband feeling tired and good about himself, but a little disappointed too, methinks. He was growing rather attached to the creature.
Yep. We are currently in possession of a Sun Conure , a tropical bird about three times the size of a budgie and multi-coloured in the yellow/red/orange/green spectrum. She's just over a year old, not full-grown, and had a terrible fright - she's evidently escaped from someone's home and was all muddy and shaking when she burst out of a hedge my husband was trimming in the West Island. He took her to a clinic or two, who all said they couldn't help him either by taking the bird or by locating an owner, since they don't treat birds, then to the Nature pet store up by Fairview to ask for what kind of food to give her. They identified the breed for him, noted that it had a breeder's band, and he brought her home with a phone number or two of bird shelters to report her. He drove home with her on his shoulder; she's evidently a shoulder bird, and cuddles close to the neck, talking to herself. She's a bit afraid of hands at the moment, and who can blame her - something that's lived inside all its life, lost in the big wide world for who knows how long? I'm surpised she's not more freaked out. My husband says she's a lot calmer than she was this afternoon, though.
Now, the craziest thing is, when we go to pet stores and look at the birds, this is the bird that we call "the Buchanan bird" because it is, I kid thee not, the exact same colours as those in my husband's kilt. For him to find one of these things loose and scared, and to have it cling to him so completely, is just, well, odd - out of all the tropical birds he could have run into outside, it was this one. She tried to fly after him when he went downstairs to get the birdcage. While she sat on my shoulder, waiting for him to come back, she was nodding off; she could barely keep her eyes open. We fed her and gave her water, and I think she's asleep now.
Turns out my husband broke Cardinal Rule #1 today as well. He calls her Cail. (Or Kael, for those who know the RSW spelling.)
Why is it that disk defragmentation always freezes up the computer?
My first day as a kitten nurse, and I am proud of my little furry charges, particularly the tiny black one that had us worried. She’s been scheduled an extra feeding, around dinner-time, and I am pleased to report that she’s getting this lapping thing down quite well, and polished off just as much formula as she did at lunch-time. At the moment I’m calling her Nix, as in “nix on any more cats”, because it’s just too hard to nurse something and only call it “kitten”. (I know, I’ve broken Cardinal Rule #1: never name an animal.) Despite her size, she’s the first to wiggle out of the cage when I sit down with the bowl of formula, and the also one who has the best control of her back legs at the moment – I’d forgotten how floppy three-week old fuzzy things are. My mother used to breed Cairn Terriers, and I remember when she used to let me help feed them in the transitional period between milk and puppy-chow. She’d soak a bit of kibble in the milk formula, put it in an old pie tin, and cover your lap with an old towel. Then you’d grab a puppy and introduce its nose to the mess by gently bouncing its head into it. Sneeze, sputter, and so forth; it took some of them a surprisingly long time to get it. When you’re ten years old, it’s great fun.
It’s still fun. Feeding the kittens is very like that, only different somehow. I think it has to do with how the kittens are even more delicate than the puppies were, and also with the Fall baby-cravings my husband and I get annually. If a baby is an impossibility right now, then caring for kittens will do just fine. So if I end up with another cat, I consider it partially the fault of Fiona, Debra, Paze and Val (along with their equally guilty significant others), who have all had babies within the past nine months.
When I’d walked home from the second round of kitten-feeding, there was a message on the machine from my husband about what an odd afternoon he’d had, and that he’d be coming home with a colourful friend who seems to have gone astray. I have an odd feeling we’ve acquired another bird, however temporary…
Has anyone else seen that fascinatingly disturbing commercial for Goldfish crackers that sings about "the happy snack that looks back at you until you bite off its head"?
Well, drat.
I was all psyched for this literacy tutor thing, and I couldn't go to the info session with Ceri because I was unable to be out of bed for more than half an hour at a time. She thoughtfully brought back the information package for me. However, it turns out the training sessions are on the two nights per week when I'm teaching and when I'm at orchestra.
Double drat.
They repeat the training sessions in later months, but again, they're on nights when I'm teaching. It seems that I am not meant to be a tutor at this time.
I am, however, to serve as a feline Florence Nightingale. A Florence Nightingale to felines, I mean. Now that the feral cat's kittens that Scarlet discovered when we came home from Pennsylvania are starting to be weaned, someone needs to feed them three or four times a day, and Scarlet's back at school full-time and working part-time. So to me will fall the early afternoon feedings, and an extra dinner-time feeding for the tiny black female who's skin and bones. I'm rather partial to that one, so I'll do my best to make sure she gets that extra meal and grows nice and plump with a shiny coat.
Still popping vitamin C, and drinking lots. I've given up on herbal teas; just can't take them anymore. I'm on water today. And I'm craving chocolate sooo badly...
Found more old e-mail as I was cleaning up my hard drive. For a while about two or three years ago, I signed off with "The Jovial Warrior Sorceress", and my sig was "Leather will do just fine". It's a bit out of character, yes, but that was half the fun. It came from the wonderful, time-wasting Lee's (Useless) Superhero Generator, which served as a source of amusement for my circle of friends for a week or two.
The next time I have to create a D&D character, none of this patiently developing a character and a background for me. Nope, it's going to be The Jovial Warrior Sorceress, levelling enemies with a quip, a rapier, a fireball and a heroic laugh. "Hold, miscreant! Have at thee! What, my hearty allies? Wearied already? A round of song, then! Ninety-nine dumb orcs charging the Wall, ninety-nine orcs at the Wall; strike one down, spread him around, ninety-eight dumb orcs charging the Wall!"
I really think I should go back to bed.
It's official! The cold has developed a fever, making this the Cold Package with Extra Bonus Material.
When I have a cold, I know what makes me worse: soda, dairy, and so forth. Sugar and milk just feed my sore throat with bad stuff and it gets worse. So of course I'm craving cola and such. Instead, I'm drinking herbal tea and bouillon. It's odd how you can fall into a routine without realising it; when I open my laptop to write, I gather my loose change and I walk to the depanneur to pick up a can of Vanilla Coke, then come back and sit down and whip off however many pages my mind decides to create and/or my fingers can keep up with (whichever comes first). I want to write today, but Vanilla Coke is right out. I suppose I could buy a ginseng drink or something, but it's just not the same.
On the much more exciting news front, my husband came home from working on someone's balcony yesterday, and after chatting with his a-bit-out-of-it wife, he wandered into the office and didn't come out. Now, he's discovering the Internet (has his own e-mail address and everything! Well, it's big news in our world, anyway), so I figured he was on-line. When I emerged from under the afghan and left my nest in the living room to refill my teacup, I stopped in the office doorway, amazed. He wasn't at my desk, where the computer is; he was at his own desk, where the new oil paints I bought for him on Saturday were. In fact, he had a palette out, and two brushes going, and a landscape taking form rather rapidly.
Oil paint fascinates me. I'm a watercolour person myself, so to see how oil blends so well is truly astounding. Even more astounding, however, was watching him blend two or three different paints on the palette, take the new colour, and blend it into a tree trunk, for example, on the painting. He doesn't seem to use long strokes very often; he dabs a lot. His foliage in particular uses this technique, and catches my attention.
The whole apartment smells different too, and it took me a while to get a fix on where I recognised it from. I shared an apartment with Annika while she was doing her BFA; her room and the bedroom hallway always smelled like this. It's the smell of creativity, and of colour, and of boldness and a moment in time.
The only problem with this fever is I'm at one remove; I feel as if I'm working under a pane of glass that separates me from the rest of the world, or a puddle that slightly distorts the sensory info that reaches me. No doubt when I re-read all this in a couple of days I'll wonder how anyone made any sense out of it.
I am officially sick. Right on time, too; I have an audition in four days. Nasty headache, sore throat, coughs and sneezes, the whole cold package. I've been feeling increasingly off all weekend, last night I slept horribly, and I'm cranky. So I'm in bed with my laptop, and when I'm done here I'll curl up with A.S. Byatt's Possession, the rest of my pot of peppermint tea, and furry hot water bottles that purr.
Well, well, well - Chretien is going to take Kyoto to Parliament. About bloody time. His Majesty will be pleased - that was going to be his next rant. Along with building a big air-proof dome over the Kyoto-scorning US, he was saying something about short-term sacrifice on the part of companies to ensure a long-term benefit of saving the planet.
I printed out the sixty-five pages of the story that I've been working on, and I read it all at one go last night. It's rather gratifying to see that things flow. I even found some lovely unintentional foreshadowing and dramatic irony that was unplanned but which works quite nicely. For things like that to happen I have to be in the right headspace, and evidently I'm occupying it on a regular basis. There are snags, and I need to smooth things out here and there, substitute other words, but all in all, I like it.
I mentioned that I'm reading Possession again. In only three chapters an innumerable amount of references to thesis-related concepts that I didn't find while I was doing it have leapt out at me. I must have been so focused on the particular angle I was after that I filtered out these other ideas, which is good for what I was doing at the time, of course. Now, though, it makes me want to write another paper. Hmm. Maybe the use of research and the character of History in Byatt's work. Angels & Insects would be perfect for that, both the title novella and its focus on natural history, and its sibling novella about mediums and reaching into the spirit world for news of past family and lovers. So would Virgin in the Garden, which is all about staging a Renaissance-related drama.
Uh-oh. Do I sense another project coming on?
I have been taken with the whim of attempting to publish something; perhaps I'll focus on an academic periodical and see what happens.
