Pastoral Pleasures, and Prairie Perils

Today was another stay-at-home day; I went out to buy mineral water, but that was it, though it was a sunny day and the trees are now splendidly leafy and the sunset was smashing, as it were. In the morning a plumber came to fix the bathtub drain, which had regurgitated its contents and flooded the bathroom. I was peacefully sleeping when the watery catastrophe occurred, though it doesn't seem to have been that spectacular anyway. Which reminds me that a bird flew into our kitchen yesterday before Mama carefully advanced toward it and thereby encouraged it to leave again. A while ago a fly came to visit, and its unfrenzied humming (sometimes flies hum frenziedly, and other times in a nice, slow, contented way) immediately reminded me of Wray Avenue.

I'm beginning to miss the beautiful surroundings of our old house very much. I knew nearly every single plant on our property, and made rounds where I visited each bush and flower. And now I won't see the luxuriant, junglish growth of May, where the countless bluebells thrive, the leaves of the chestnut spread and the spikes of magenta-specked white flowers blossom, and the broad leaves of the tulip languishingly bend back onto the ground; or the spiky green grass sprinkled with daisies and dandelions, or the pale purple lilac blossoms mingling with the pale yellow gorse blossoms beside our pond, where the tangled dark branches of the birch with their tender leaves are reflected in the brown waters. Or the rhododendrons, light pink and purple and dark pink. Or the dark red maple tree with its golden cascading tassels of blossoms. Or the starry blossoms of the plum, the musky-smelling, brown-pistilled ones of the pear, the soft pink-tinged ones of the apple, or the billowy white ones of the cherry. Or the finely scented pale pink roses behind the garage. And so on and so forth. It really did resemble the Garden of Eden, to me at least. I miss the sounds of the songbirds, cows, crows, dogs, ravens, frogs, crickets (though it would probably still be too early for them), Canada geese, and chickens too. I think I'd vegetate if I were transplanted into the countryside again, but on the whole I don't think any city can be nearly as beautiful as the countryside at its best.

Anyway, I didn't make progress on the pirate story because the computer where I wrote it was mostly occupied today. I didn't mind either; I've been going through more of it in my mind. I was debating whether the hero should die at the gallows at the end. Of course I'd prefer to go without, and give him a less ignominious death (if any), but truthfulness seems to demand that outcome. I think I'll have him rescue an English ship-of-the-line from a French warship first, though -- not to paint the English admiralty in blacker colours, but to show
1) that even people who are seen as beyond the pale of the law are capable of good deeds;
2) that heroism is rarely recognized or rewarded by one's fellow man; and
3) the harm that people do who, as the quotation goes, would rather die than think (for themselves).
Which makes the story sound much more didactic than I intended. But when I write I'll probably forget this ideological agenda.

I've also read a Western novel again, Gunsight Pass by William MacLeod Raine, about a young rancher from Arizona who is framed for murder, goes to prison for many years, then emerges and helps set up and run an oil drilling corporation for an old friend. In the modern perspective, of course, the tale does not particularly have a happy end, but the author and characters are happily oblivious of the bigger picture. The book is a well-rounded specimen of its genre, with a desert, cattle, prison, bets, horses, a rattlesnake or two (not really part of the tale), cowboy lingo, a fiendish ranch boss, corrupt rail officials, a bank, a hold-up of a stage coach, a brush fire, the oil (of course), guns of various makes and calibres, and Mexicans (this time alluded to without racist epithets, I do believe). The preferred Western heroine seems to be an affectionate, vivacious, independent, pretty woman with curly red-gold hair and a graceful way of moving, and the heroine of this book covered the criteria quite well. The hero was, as always, "lean," "bronzed," "strong," etc., but the author didn't indulge as much in the nauseating virile-strength-and-beauty-worship, or talk of the "purification" of men in the rough-and-tumble Wild West life, as other authors of Westerns do.

Besides this I also played the piano; the Notebook of Anna Maria Magdalena Bach went particularly well, and the first movements of Schubert's sonatas D. 958 and 959 went well as far as I played them, but everything else was clumsy. At least the Mozart sonatas that I played were also decent. Lately, whenever I try to play the pieces while correcting errors in timing and dynamics, and so on, it really does interfere with the actual music. A mezzoforte turns out an awkward, unpretty forte, for example. It's not really fair that I just conscientiously try to play something properly and then it makes the whole thing sound insincere, stilted and bad. But I suppose that dynamic markings, or the information that a certain trill is best played using the second and fourth fingers, are not the stuff of which musical inspiration is made.