Merry Christmas!

For Christmas, here is one of my favourite German carols, "O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf." It is a poem written by Friedrich von Spee in ca.1622, during the Thirty Years' War, and it is sung to a melancholy melody that also appears to come from the 17th century. Despite the militant opening, I like the lyrics as much as the melody, for their beauty and pithiness. I think that they go directly to the core of Christmas: it is a feast that briefly recreates the fruitfulness and brightness of summer in the "bleak mid-winter," when we sorely need it. The poem reminds me of a stained glass window seen from the gloomy stone interior of a medieval church; for, though the context may be dark, it depicts inspiriting visions of brighter things.

I was going to post the German text, and then compress my English translation under it in a handful of lines. But the German is so familiar that I have decided to post only the English. I do hope it isn't awful; I've been tinkering with it off and on for some weeks, much pleased by the chance to use archaic words, and though this version isn't perfect I'll leave it as it is, and stop fussing, because I'm becoming neurotic. (c:

O Saviour, rend the heavens wide,
to us beneath from heaven stride;
rend from the heavens gate and door,
rend where the key and bar before.

O God, a dew from heaven pour;
in the dew descend, we ask, Saviour.
Ye clouds, break out and rain down from
the king who sits o'er Jacob's home.

O Earth, strike forth, strike forth, o Earth,
in hill and vale to end green's dearth.
O Earth for this bring forth a flow'r;
o Saviour from the soils spring forth this hour.

Where bid'st thou, solace of the world,
in whom her hopes are wholly furled?
O come from chambers thine on high,
as in the vale of tears we cry.

O clearest sun, thou lovely star,
thee we do like to see afar.
O sun, rise forth; without thine shine
In darkness woeful we repine.

The gravest need we suffer here,
in our eyes Death stands always near;
o come lead us with pow'rful hand
from mis'ry to our fatherland.

Then shall we all thank thee, o Lord,
our redeemer evermore.
O Lord, then shall we all praise thee,
for always and eternally.

An Excursion to the UN

This morning I went on my final excursion aside from the trip I'll be taking back to the airport tomorrow. It is a freezingly cold day, and the downtrodden icy snow on the sidewalks is a definite hazard, though in Manhattan the ground is laced with salt, which improves the matter. No clouds, only clear sky. This means that tomorrow it'll be colder, but on the other hand there won't be snow that would prevent my flight from taking off.

I went to the UN Building today, as I didn't know anything else I especially wanted to see, and it is accessible from the E and V trains with a little walking. The streets in between Lexington Ave/53rd station and the UN are pleasantly grungy as far as the apartment buildings are concerned, gnarled brick edifices so dark with age that they look black, but host to a lively though mostly hidden variety of stores and inhabitants. Along the sidewalks the people were of all sorts of ages and origins and income levels; they weren't thronging along, but merely happened to drift by. Of course there are lots of skyscrapers, too. It could be a seedy place but it isn't, only interesting. One of the benefits of southern Manhattan's condensed layout is, as far as I've seen, that everybody goes everywhere and there isn't much ghettoization.

The UN building itself is adrift in a wasteland of road and empty waterfront, and there is construction being done at the row of flagpoles, which are bare. So, though the tower itself was distinctive and recognizable, it had a sad and isolated air. There was a tented visitor's entrance, where a security official or two was standing, but I had no intention of having my purse searched, etc., so I stood in front of it for a while and took in the surrounding scene, and left again.

In general I find that the New York of popular culture is a very boring and untruthful depiction of the real thing. Physically, it is much too glamourized in films and photos, and one only truly sees a tiny, and then unrealistically aesthetically homogenized, portion of it. Psychologically, the most fascinating nuances of the people who live here are ignored in favour of facile stereotypes. As for the poorer areas, it's not fair to cast violence as the only problem in the poorer areas, and to absolve society at large of all responsibility. One has to look at cause and effect. The greater problem, I'd say, is that the infrastructure is so severely lacking. The greatest problem is ghettoization: living in circumstances that others can't understand, not being able to get out of a neighbourhood, and not having the resources at hand that one needs. That said, I think that conditions are changing. The neighbourhood of the hostel is predominantly black, but you only have to look at the people to see that they have as different personalities, backgrounds, and mentalities, as if (to employ a rather grandiloquent phrase) they were all the colours of the rainbow.

At any rate, I'm extremely glad I came here, not only as an amateur observer but also for myself. It has given me a lot of courage and energy.

Central Park in December

The sight I most wanted to see in New York, though I am neutral about specific sites and much more interested in getting a general picture, was Central Park, and today I saw it. Taking the subway was easy enough, so was buying a bite to eat at an expensive grocery store. The store, a nec plus ultra of its species, had an incredibly tempting healthy buffet, but I didn't want the hassle of finding out how it works, and the dried fruit and nut mixes were expensive; so I settled for white chocolate and key lime cookies, which taste good and at least contain protein and carbohydrates. My voice had recovered a little but was very low, so my polite responses to the cashier's civilities were lost, and she, to employ the vernacular, looked at me funny. Then I began to ascend Fifth Avenue at the southeastern corner of the park. It had begun to snow and the scene amid the skyscrapers was filmic, except for the worn paint and fissured and patched asphalt on the streets, nasty wetness of the sidewalks, puzzling frequency of SUVs, and the annoyed honking of car drivers, among them the mindbogglingly pervasive swarm of taxis. In front of a black skyscraper the snow was particularly effective, and the crimson berries on a tree in the street mediuman were a fine finishing touch. I liked the pots of evergreens along the streets, too, and the streets' ample width.

Then and later, I especially liked the more traditional skyscrapers. Columbus Circle has its share of lurid modernities, among them the Trump Tower, which has a very Las Vegas sensibility: black and slinky as a pair of tights, and of a coppery sheen. But further along the east and to the west of the park there are truly majestic edifices that bear the marks of the old countries whence the New Yorkers of the 19th century and earlier came. The highest resemble castles; the lower are merely apartment buildings with the familiar Georgian scrolling or Baroque flair, but they stretch up and up. They are so diverse in style and size that they did not intimidate me, and I love buildings in which people can clearly live well. But it irritated me greatly to spot an inscription, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (hopefully I've repeated the phrasing correctly), on an uglier specimen of Fifth Avenue architecture, because it felt like the epitome of hypocrisy. To me the churches also looked like temples not to God but to the smug egos of the builders. If a building still looks boring and pompous, constructing it out of blank grey stone and squelching the architectural life out of it won't pass for wholesome humility. At least it was pleasantly bizarre to find a blandly simplified English church, in the style of the medieval countryside, transplanted into a hectic city street.

I thought that Central Park would be much more like Prospect Park, a continuous plain of grass and trees, freely open to the sidewalks around it. Instead, it was hedged about in short stone walls, cut up by streets, and crowded with buildings, at least where the zoo is. It is also immensely hilly and it has an even fierce aspect at times. The charm of iron and delicately engraved, fine-grained stone are fully exploited, and winter scarcely detracts from its beauty. In the southern stretch the Frick Collection appears on the other side of the road, a corniced grey edifice that rises from the iron-fenced green lawn with a lovely, grave, ancient Greek serenity. I had intended to visit it, but upon holding an examination of my purse this morning it seemed wisest to desist (admission is $15), and, to be barbaric but truthful, I think that photos of its exhibitions are quite as satisfactory. As for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it may be embedded in the park, but it is the rump that looks out upon the beauties of nature, and not a very lovely rump either; the festive end looks out onto the Avenue. I didn't enter it either, for the same reason as the other (and the museum demands 20$ admission! the nerve!).*

Near the Metropolitan Museum there is a small hill surmounted by Cleopatra's Needle, an obelisk ca. 1500 BC that looks as old as it is, in a good way. It lies at the Great Lawn, and when I walked toward this lawn in order to find a walkway up to the obelisk, that name reminded me of Prince Caspian and the dancing congress of the fauns. The resemblance to Narnia was even increased a moment later, when I saw a gloomy stone staircase ascending the slope to the obelisk, under the shadow of two hemlocks, with a black lantern at the corner. There are other half-forgotten but well-kept oddities in Central Park, originating at different epochs in its history, and I thought that Belvedere Castle (designed 1865) was a beautiful surprise. It is a little castle on the top of a rocky crag, overlooking a lake that has a Japanese aspect, and it is so picturesque and perfect in its way that it's difficult to guess why Walt Disney has not sunk its claws into it yet.

Now to digress on the snow. At first it was a delightful frosty brightener of the scene, and I could even hear it rustling peacefully; then it coated my coat and melted in my hair and flocked down so densely that one couldn't see farther than a city block; and it set a treacherous soft cover of powdery snow on the ground upon which one could, and I did, slip (I performed an awkward quarter split at an intersection, but managed to keep from falling on my posterior by stretching out my hand); and at last it blew from the north in stinging pellets that made my face luminous in a ruddy and not beatific manner, and assailed my eyes, and ran down my cheeks and the tip of my nose as it melted.

At any rate, I spotted the Museum of Natural History across the street, with its immensely squat Ionic pillars in the Tuscan style (well, what I mean is that they have Ionic capitals but smooth shafts; hopefully Tuscan is the right term). Squarely in the entrance there rises a hilarious heroic statue of a bronze Theodore Roosevelt astride a horse; in lusty political incorrectness, a Native American guide stands to his left and an African guide stands to his right. I've never thought of Teddy as a man of action, and the sculpture is in positively outlandish taste. It might seem impossible to improve upon this, but sharing the stage with the 26th president and his minions, there are two evergreen dinosaur sculptures that lumber to the left and the right of the entrance, illumined with threads of Christmas lights and holding up Christmas wreaths in their talons.

There's more to tell but I don't remember it now. Long story short, a good time was had. Even if I had the money, however, I would not want to live in Fifth Avenue. There are beautiful and stately apartments along it, but mostly it feels obscenely rich and unreal. Walking along the windows of Harry Winston, Mikimoto, Gianbattista Vian(? I wasn't paying much attention to the shop windows, but that store caught my attention with a breathtaking wedding dress whose skirt looked like ridges of lime-flavoured whipping cream), and so on and so forth, the most pleasant emotion that was provoked was contentment that I am not wallowing in plenty where others have none. Wealth and class are all right in their place, but I do not like it when they become an excuse for blocking the rest of humanity out of existence, literally or figuratively, as much as one can.


*[As has been pointed out, the $20 admission is merely suggested. I misread the website and apologize for the unjust allegation.]

Meandering in Manhattan

Last evening I felt seriously ill, with what felt like a fever, the sore throat and cold, parched mouth, etc. Yet in the morning I woke up in a wonderful state of mind, and I’m not being sarcastic. I had folded the dirty blanket in half, so that the clean side covered me, and therefore slept warmly and well. The sun was shining, faintly because it's winter, but still, and I had forgotten all the terrible feelings.

But I urgently needed to change my euros into dollars. So I decided to try a bank in Manhattan, in the hopes that such institutions would be reputable. I consulted the internet, this time using the MTA trip planner (the Google Maps instructions are too vague for me) and then set off to the nearest subway station. The entrances of the stations are quite modest, here, by the way; narrow and surrounded by a small dark railing in the sidewalks at intersections, easy for the eye to miss. At the ticket machine I opened up my wallet to pay the $2.00 for a single ride ticket, to find to my horror that the idea that I had $12.42 left was totally wrong; I only had $2.42 left. So I paid for the ticket in fear and trembling, and then pictured myself stranded in Manhattan without money for food or the transit back to Brooklyn, staying overnight in a park or somewhere safer, trying to avoid being told to move on by policemen. There was no way I could afford to take the wrong trains or give up on finding a bank.

At any rate, I successfully took the G train to Hoyt-Schemerhorst Schermerhorn station, then transferred to an A train instead of the C train (different lines often share the same platforms, and sometimes you have to wait while the wrong train passes three times in a row before the right line comes, and you certainly shouldn't just jump into the first train you see). There was a blue-coated lady holding onto the same pole as mine, and I asked her whether I could get to the same stations on the A line. It turns out that the A train fortunately stops at the Canal St. station too (I chose Canal St. because I'd heard that there are shops along there, so I assumed there must be banks too). Someone else also helped me out, and even told me that the Canal St. station would come up four stations later (which information is useful, because it's often hard to see the names of stations). It turns out that there are subway maps in some train cars and stations, but they are far and few between. The platforms can also be incredibly long, about as long as a city block.

So I got out at Canal St., and walked around 6th Avenue (a.k.a. Avenue of the Americas) and West Broadway, looking for a bank. There I saw my first Manhattan buildings, and they looked rather nice and not as overpowering as I had feared, mostly older brick edifices. I found a Valley-something-or-other bank, where the teller directed me to a currency exchange at 400 West Broadway. There is no exchange there, but there is a tiny booth at 401 West Broadway. I couldn't open the door, but a sign said that there was another location at the Empire State Building. So I set off down Spring St. (as it turns out, in the wrong direction) hoping to hit 5th Ave. eventually. Instead I ended up in Hudson River Park, and then walked down and down toward Battery Park, hoping that it is frequented by tourists enough to contain a currency exchange booth or two (but I preferred a bank, because they seem less likely to cut a bad deal). Along the way I drank from water fountains, and rested now and then. Skyscrapers rose from across the Hudson River (which looked pale brown close up and tepidly blue from farther away, and was wavy but broken into countless tiny dips), in New Jersey; Ellis Liberty Island with the delightful Statue of Liberty and the low mass of leafless trees with its American flag was visible to the south.

At last I asked at a hotel lobby where a currency exchange was to be found, and the person in the lobby directed me to a Chase Bank some four blocks up on the same side of the street. At the "Business" counter there, I finally managed to exchange my Euros into dollars, after showing the clerk my passport. I thought that I only forked over 90 Euros, so I was astounded to receive over $170 in exchange (the fee for the exchange was $5), and asked if the number wasn't a bit too high. The clerk said no, but I went out unconvinced. I found a pharmacy and happily bought proper shampoo, and cough drops, and other things. (By the way, the cashier there put everything in a black bag, too, so it seems to be the norm here.) The cough drops are intended to be taken once every hour; I consumed at least six within an hour, not being sure when and if I would be getting something proper to eat. At the park I had a conflict of conscience about the presumptive error of the clerk, and at length made up my mind to return to the bank, when I consulted the receipt and realized that I had given the cashier 130 Euros, so everything was all right. More than all right!

Then I wandered around the streets, hoping to find a subway station, and a place to eat. I noticed that whenever young black men were coming from the opposite direction, they seemed to expect that I would put as much distance between us as I passed them as possible. Keeping at a distance felt like a dumb thing to do, because of course not every black person is a thief, so I didn't do it. But now I believe that there are lots of purse-snatchers around, so people tend not to go too close to possible thieves, which may be a behaviour that I should adopt, too. Still, I don't like the racist overtones of only avoiding black people, so I'll probably just walk reasonably far away from everybody. I also noticed that New Yorkers don't really care whether they are supposed to cross a street or not. They'll step off the curb into the road, crowding as far forward as they can, and as soon as no car is coming they'll cross, green light or no green light (well, to be literal, a white stick-man means that you may cross, as opposed to the orange hand). Sometimes a police officer or two helps conduct the traffic.

Along the way I passed through the City Hall Park, which is truly delightful. It has pine boughs entwined into the iron lantern-posts, and in the centre there is an arrangement of glowing dark green evergreens, red and yellow osiers, and greenish-golden cedars, that looked even lively, and myriad branches swept upward over the triste muddy lawns. What is also delightful are the chalky, grand, and peaked old skyscrapers in the distance. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there were modern ones at the World Financial Center that looked like well-maintained tombs, the windows annoyingly neither small nor generous, but boringly middling in size.

Then I saw a Dunkin' Donuts and went in, after resisting the temptation of three of the ubiquitous Starbucks outlets. Last evening I was fantasizing about what I'd like to eat, but felt horrified at the idea of greasy food, infinitely preferring a nice repast of white fish, rice, cranberry sauce, and rapunzel (i.e. lamb's lettuce) with a vinaigrette of olive oil and red wine vinegar and lemon juice and a little sugar. I pictured all this in my mind and it cheered me up considerably, like the amazingly vivid dream that I'd had, perhaps on the previous night, of eating apple sauce (I tasted it and felt the texture and everything). But my reluctance at the idea of donuts faded when I saw the store this morning, though I remembered just before entering to get something more nutritious. So I ordered an iced tea for its refreshing qualities, and a basil-chicken pizzetta: a crust topped with white cheese, diced chicken, chopped tomato, red onion, and mayonnaise with basil specks (I dislike mayonnaise, but didn't care at this point). It cost ca. $7.42, but I didn't care about that either. There was a room in the back, which had a nice ambience, where ten or so other people were eating, many of them police officers (one young white woman, who seemed more like a college girl than a policewoman, was insisting that she isn't being given special treatment, while her colleague was rather skeptical). I ate my pizza in little pieces in great contentment because this was precisely the food I needed, and because my toothache was so far improved (presumably due to my long walk) that it wasn't painful to eat anymore. The iced tea also actually tasted of tea.

After leaving, I passed the former site of the World Trade Center, which was surrounded by blue plastic and fencing, as machines were busy rebuilding inside it. I looked over twice or so, but didn't gawk, as this practice seems repellent to me. Behind it there is a truly charming old church, St. Paul's, which was built in the Georgian style in the 1760s, was attended at one point by George Washington, and is apparently the only colonial edifice remaining in Manhattan. It has a curly bronze spire, which is a little younger, and around it there is a graveyard full of gloomy, elderly, thin tombstones and cracked tombs and barren trees, that very much bring to mind the haunted New England of Washington Irving. There are intriguing inscriptions, still visible, too, and stars at the graves of Revolutionary War veterans. On two of the wooden benches, (presumably) native New Yorkers were quietly eating their lunches, as others were bustling around the doors. I loved it. What I loved less is the signs that wallowed in the proximity of the church to the World Trade Centre disaster with what seemed to me to be breathless excitement, and that pompously celebrated visits by former Archbishop George Carey, Pope John Paul II, etc.

At any rate, I went through Chinatown, which was really exciting, and passed a grinning individual who looked very much like Robert de Niro, and at last came across Canal St. There are countless stores offering scarves, cheaper jewellery, etc., and it is a cheerful place. But what pleased me most of all was discovering the subway station by which I had come, and then returning (with only one wrong train) to the hostel.

I had fully expected to find all my belongings filched, but they had not been, so that was already good. Then I went up to the kitchen to get tea. It turns out that one doesn't need a match or any other lighter for the stove; you turn it all the way up, the flames appear, and then you turn it down again to the proper setting. W*** helped me figure this out, and then she offered me some cupcakes or muffins or pastries, which was really nice of her. So I had a cup of tea and a cinnamon roll, and my faith in humanity (I am really wary of people now) was much restored. And that's it so far for the epic that has been my day.

My deduction from the whole is that I might like to live in Manhattan, though it would be best to figure out how to rent an apartment properly, etc., before going. Also, this trip is good for me because it is so much better solving concrete and surmountable problems than living a melancholy and introverted life without distractions. I have also realized that my attitude toward other people has been wrong, and that I should be open and considerate, and disregard others' opinions of me unless they are fair. Also, my present sense is that I can thrive in Berlin just as well as in New York. What matters is what I make out of it. So this trip may be like the Wizard of Oz film, in which I travel far only to recognize that I like home just as well.

P.S.: I've lost my voice and it hurts to swallow. My list of aches and pains continues!

The Case of the Purloined Coat

Frankly I feel quite dreadful now. The shampoo that I bought this morning is a bad-smelling green goop with which I do not want to inflict my hair, so I washed my hair using plain water. Then I discovered that my blue coat has gone missing, and only the silk scarf that was folded in its pocket was removed and lain on the top bunk of the bed in which I sleep, whence I recovered it. This really bothered me, as it is a very lovely coat, fine cobalt Irish wool on the outside, and a soft palette of vibrant colours (like a Klee painting) in checkers on the inside of the hood, and lined in pale blue silk. It was what I brought along to wear in Manhattan, for example, and more crucially it is the coat that has been serving me for a blanket the past nights. I have one cloak left, but I just tried sleeping under it and it is neither so warm nor does it cover me as well, and despite wearing the scarf too, I was shivering. Secondly, it bothers me that the coat was taken by someone in the hostel, probably a dorm-mate, because I don't want to think ill of them. So I've been in a sniffly state for at least the past hour.

Then my throat feels sore and the odd cold that I contracted from the cold air in the plane persists and my cheek is almost as swollen as ever. Foraging on the second floor above ground level, I discovered a kitchen where the only foodstuffs which everyone may take appear to be spices and tea-bags. There was nothing available to light the gas range, to heat water for a tisane, so I ate a tiny peck of cumin seeds.

At any rate I am determined to preserve strength, so I will be napping and web-surfing as much as I can. And, on the bright side, someone else has a very nice coat now, I do have other jackets and coats at home, and I'll have lighter luggage on the flights back to Berlin. Also, this is still a fairly good day in comparison.

As for the progress that has been made in deciding about my future, it has been modest. As far as daydreams go, I've thought that one might open a good grocery store in a neighborhood like this one, and let people buy things on credit up to, let's say, a hundred dollars so that they can pay for the wares. Another daydream is to set up a public works programme where people are employed to renovate houses and repair the streets and sidewalks, under the aegis and according to the training of, for instance, retired experts who could still use an income. But these projects lie well outside of my expertise. So, to be more specific about what I personally want to do, my present take on matters is to pursue music as far as it will take me. Somehow it's harder to be genuine in writing; secondly, I think that music tends to draw much better on one's potential maturity instead of only on one's present capabilities and experience, so it's something that I can do as well now as two decades later.

A Curtailed Shopping Run

This morning I woke up early and well-rested, though considerably irritated by the lack of toothpaste and so on. I determined to go to a shopping mall in Queens, and researched the subway route there. The subway stations here have halls where you can buy the tickets (metrocards) from the touch-screened machines, with cash or a VISA or, I think, a debit card. I only had tiny change and a $20 bill (the machine can only give change up to ca. $6.50), so a woman directed me to a booth with two attendants, one of whom gave me back a $10, a $5, and five $1 bills for my twenty. Then I passed one of the turnstiles, swiping my Metrocard along the designated groove, climbed down the stairs, and reached a station that looked pretty much like any other that I saw later. Steel pillars, in an I-shaped cross-section, stand at intervals along the gum-infested platform; movie posters on the faintly green, small-tiled walls; peeling paint on the ceiling. Someone in baseball cap, loose trousers, grey T-shirt, jacket, and sneakers was jogging in place enthusiastically as he listened to music, and at length he intoned aloud, "Isn't the mood electric?" (No.) and so on and so forth.

After changing my mind twice about which platform was the right one (again, no maps, only signs indicating the line's identity and the station's identity), I entered the correct train. It was packed and most people (of all ages and origins) didn't even have to hold on to the poles. At Court Square I went out, and searched in vain for the V train to Forest Hills. Or at least I think it was in vain, because there were three E trains that arrived and went as I was there, but not a single V train, even though the sign seemed to indicate that it was a shared platform. I felt like whimpering, out of exasperation and bewilderment, and did a little bit internally. But then I retraced my steps, got into the right train by luck, and then returned to Brooklyn. Temporarily I've given up on public transit, though.

There is a trio of grocery stores at the subway station, the one with the deli apparently being the least sleazy. But the deli store had everything except for toiletries, so I went into another store which had a large stock of no-name brands. I selected a Head&Shoulders shampoo whose container was dirty and had a dent in one side (they all were and did), a Colgate toothpaste tube that looked all right, and a deodorant. The cashier did not give me the three cents change that I was supposed to have, if I understood the price correctly, and no receipt, and he packed everything into an unmarked black plastic bag, so that this shopping felt very much like an underhanded monetary transaction. I suspect that many of the wares in the store are diluted and refilled into further containers. But being able to brush my teeth again was worth it.

I have $12.42 left, which I am hoarding to ensure that I can pay for transit to a currency exchange booth. No food, no aspirin (it ran out last night), nothing to drink except tap water (which I have resorted to a lot in the past two days). Fortunately, though the jaw is still swollen, my toothache is endurable now.

Notes on the Hood

I wanted to buy water and the toiletries (deodorant, shampoo, and toothpaste) which I omitted to take along in the flight, but there is a dismal lack of the generous Turkish grocery stores that I know from Berlin. One of my roommates (more about them later) pointed me to "Bravo," which was supposedly at the street corner, but either it is the shop that is closed, or I was looking at the wrong street corner. So I walked down a little, and someone actually asked me for directions! so I must have looked like I belong in the scene! but I couldn't tell him, of course, and he went on his way. In the meantime the cars were honking merrily away, either because the driver was impatient or recognized someone he knew.

I made up my mind to go to a KFC store at the intersection. I had read before that poorer people in the cities have no choice but to buy unhealthy food, because it is what they can afford and because it is what is available. Here is more empirical evidence. The store sold no water, only Pepsi and Diet Pepsi and Cola and Mountain Dew. Out of an impulse for which I (metaphorically speaking) kicked myself later, as I generally refuse to sacrifice taste to calorie-counts, I ordered a diet pepsi. With a small box of popcorn chicken, it cost $3.88. The pepsi was mostly ice cubes and tasted of the plastic container in which it was presumably kept, and the popcorn chicken, in a box that was small indeed, tasted more of chicken grease than of the miserable little snippets of meat that they contained. To guard against hold-ups, the cashiers and cooks were behind a glass wall interrupted only by the two little swivelling boxes in which they deposited the food and change, and received the money. I don't regret going to the store, because I needed substantial food of some sort, and of course gathered information, but I do think that the large proportion of ice, which I presume to be company policy as the cashier herself was friendly and competent, is only one instance of egregious exploitation by a major corporation. There are charts that list the number of calories (multitudinous! I think mine contained 800!) in each dish, but they are not going to solve much of anything.

My hostel is incidentally guarded against break-ins, too. There is a keypad on the door, and one has to type in a code to enter. There is also a doorbell, but I'm not going to use it anymore because not knowing who is at the door when they have to answer it probably does make the hostel staff nervous. As for my roommates, they are all girls (I chose an all-female dorm as I do not like the charged dynamic that the mixed rooms tend to have). There is one girl, T***, who was strenuously trying to sleep, from behind a makeshift curtain of towels, when I arrived yesterday evening. She has an army of hair care products, a clothes-iron, clothing, a bathrobe, food (crackers, water, Coke), a big and much scuffed orange backpack, huddled in a range around her bunkbed (both of whose levels she has taken as her own) and on top of the mantel of the apparently defunct fireplace. On many of them she has scrawled her name in bold letters, which is why I know it. Then there is W***, an abrupt and irritable but not bad-hearted student(?) who is shortish, wears glasses, and has her blackish hair in a bob; she has a single bed in a niche to herself. So far I have only asked her whether everyone could use the coat-hangers on the rack (we can), and she has asked me whether I'm Nellie (I'm not). Thirdly, there is a girl who woke me up last night by saying "Who is that?" (repeatedly) in the direction of my semi-slumbering form, and then inquired, upon seeing that I was awake, if I was too cold without a blanket. She may be the one who has a book by some entity named Osho lying on the grey carpet and a hair-curler reposing at its ease on a low table, and who altogether scatters about her belongings more than W*** or me but not nearly so much as T***. What I suspect is that at least one of these girls is a student, staying at the hostel in the long term as a cost-cutting measure.

A Tourist Strays in Brooklyn

After I wrote my last post, I researched bus and subway routes, and even if one only looks at Brooklyn they are terribly confusing (one-way streets, etc.), a Gordian knot that cannot be cut except by the medium of the car, and even then the car routes are probably likewise labyrinthine. There are little curling bus routes, but they are localized and do not run in one long, satisfactory stretch. Or maybe the stretches are long but look short given the vast proportions of the map.

At any rate, after a moment of despair I figured that this would be a perfect opportunity to learn not to be a wimp where public transit is concerned. So I found one simple bus route down to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and took it (a fare for two hours, is $2.00 unless one is a student or something). The buses here are not accordion-like but broad; the doors can only be swung open outward with a great deal of effort. I rode along a street full of old brick apartment buildings, classicist or very restrainedly Baroque in their flourishes, spare and simple but tinted in glass green or pale senna or the customary brick red. The fire escapes were a delicate filigree. Some of the buildings were really ramshackle, others were in fine trim. So I felt that I had seen a quite satisfactory wedge of the real New York. But of course it is a poor region. There are mostly African-Americans of all ages along the sidewalks, in runners and hoodies and so on, a bustling community in one way, but not very lively because bored and impoverished. No one was rapping away or breakdancing on the sidewalks, and I don't remember even seeing anyone swaggering about decked out festively in bling. The small shops (a notice on one of them said that food stamps were accepted there) are interspersed with little latter-20th-century religious edifices like the "Church of God" (isn't that redundant?). As for the cars, there is an immense variety, but the majority are shiny new and not matte older models, and many are also SUVs or minivans.

I stepped out at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where admittance is free during weekdays in winter. There was a security booth at the front entrance, and a bored soul tenanted it, but the door was wide open. At first there was a children's garden which did not impress me much, as it struck me as an amalgamation of all the cutesy gardens (gnomes, grinning suns, etc.) that I have ever seen, rendered unsettling in the contrast of its artificial cheer and the weeping dead grasses, leafless trees, etc. But shortly there came the first trees, catawbas and the biggest gingko biloba I have ever seen, oaks (an avenue of them was planted to commemorate Sept. 11th, which is evidently still quite present, as are American flags at schools, buses, and the train I took yesterday), and swathes of green lawn. The plants are marked with touching accuracy, in the form of little black signs. Then there were monuments of a Victorian sensibility, a sparse neoclassical building that housed the visitor's centre and gift shop, great sea-green domes of glass in which the tropical plants flourish, a rose garden (rose-less at present, of course), and a "cherry esplanade."

After gazing at the Brooklyn Museum, a vast edifice that rivals London's National Gallery in pomp, I made my way to Prospect Park, where joggers and people walking their dogs passed me, and children shrieked at the zoo, and everyone shrieked in the ice rink at the lake. The lake itself, the biggest one in the park, is hauntingly impressive if you ignore the modern buildings, or any buildings, and just watch the grey squirrels, hear the birds twitter, and look out on the swampy expanse with the islands of barren willow and other trees, the cattails, etc., imagining that this is the way the area might have looked when the first European explorers arrived. I also enjoyed the busts of Irving (, Washington?), Beethoven and Mozart, which were proudly perched on top of pillars above the ice rink. But I often heard police car sirens in the background, which did not make me less queasy about the city. Also, whenever the bank of the lake was accessible from the path, there was a red ladder ready to rescue anyone who ventures out onto thin ice, and warning signs to prevent someone from doing that in the first place. At one point a cyclist was passing me when I looked up, and he said, surprisingly in a way that did not sound corny (though, as I type it, it is of course kitschy) or creepy at all, "Hi, you are very beautiful, for Christmas and forever." -- and he cycled on. Very random.

As I walked, then, getting lost and worried (but not too worried), I then philosophized about my trip. The idea of living in a neighborhood where rents are cheaper, regardless of how unsafe it is, has been knocked out of my head once and for all. I don't believe in fearing and shunning everyone, just because there are a couple hoodlums about, and I've concluded that there are bad, good, and indifferent people to be found everywhere -- only in the city there are more of them. But it is not respectful to parade into a neighborhood that is governed by a code that I do not understand, and not fair to myself or anyone else to parade about like a sitting duck with a target painted on its back. Going out alone is very ill-advised; I should either have friends here first or live together with somebody. Still, being too attractive doesn't worry me in the least, as I doubt that I approach the common North American standards of beauty, and I have no intention to wear the make-up, shinier hair, or tighter clothes that would be required. But it is too easy to get lost; even staying in the bus does not work if I have to change buses, and then wait for fifteen minutes, on my own, at a half or wholly empty station in the middle of nowhere. There are no maps in the bus shelters, only diagrams of the route of the specific bus line, it is hard to tell which bus stop is coming up, and altogether it is impossible to get anywhere without a map (whether on paper or in one's head). Even if I am capable of learning the rules, I am helpless until I do. My sense is that most New Yorkers, even, tend to move in small radii within their city, especially if they are poorer.

Maybe I will still move here, and procure work as a translator for German into English, for instance, but before renting an apartment I would find out all I can about the surroundings first. It's not a hoity-toity desire to be removed from the hoi polloi, but common sense. I also do not want to be around people who are prone to hoodwinking others; not because of its inconvenience to me so much as that I find the unkindness and the unworthy victimization of the weak saddening. If I had known what awaited me here, I might not have come now. But, as it is, this is immensely interesting, and challenging, and I like that pretty much everyone here is genuine. If I must conduct fencing-matches with others, it is so much more straightforward if they are straightforward (if one can read character well). Besides, it is proving to me that, as I suspected, I do have much force of character now, and that is what is crucial.

At any rate, the length of my post bears an inverse ratio to the breadth of my experience here, so I guess I'd better desist. What does bother me is that I haven't eaten or drunk anything since yesterday evening, though a chocolate bar from the plane is still waiting to be consumed. Also that I have very little American cash. Gallivanting off to JFK again is something I don't want to do after the experience of yesterday, so hopefully there will be a location in Manhattan where I can change money. More snow, by the way!

A Comedy of Errors

(Written in haste; please pardon any errors.)

I'm in New York, and I don't know whether to laugh or to cry about it. The flights yesterday, from Tegel to London-Heathrow and London-Heathrow to JFK airport took a long time, and this time was rendered much longer by the raging toothache which caused a walnut-sized bump to form to the right of my chin. I had aspirin, fortunately, and on the transatlantic flight I received some other medication from the stewardesses, after "signing my life away," i.e. indicating that I was doing so at my own risk, as one of them wryly said. But I liked the flight in all other aspects, except for the soggy sandwiches that were served for breakfast. Beside me there was a friendly woman from New Jersey, and we chatted away for a while; across the aisle there was a rather unfriendly man from one of the Carolinas who spoke in a southern drawl, told the steward "Don't lecture me" when the latter was pointing out that he could not come to serve people during takeoff (the man had pressed the button), and chatted with another presumably southern girl who followed up sentences with a "sir" that was supposed to be respectful but came off as affected. The flight took longer due to strong headwinds and the collapse of some equipment behind us when we were still in the berth.

At JFK, customs took forever, in a stifling, low-ceilinged room where even the three large fans did not help much. There was still a pained throng of foreigners when all the American citizens had passed through and were helping themselves to their baggage. I also felt insulted that we had to get digital prints of all of our fingers, then have a digital photo taken. The customs agent was an interesting dour type, though, possibly a prison warden, and yet quite polite.

Then came the bother of trying to find the trolley that I presumed would take me to Jamaica Station. It turns out that the "air trains" at the airport take you there. The air trains run along glass hallways that only look like glass hallways, not like platforms, when you walk along them at night (as I did). The darned terminal where I was at did not indicate which train went where; it was only after much to-ing and fro-ing, and thanks to inquiry, that I found another terminal where a sign did tell you that this was the Howard Beach(?)/Jamaica line, and then I had to be careful to step in the Jamaica and not the Howard Beach(?) train.

At Jamaica Station I had to buy tickets at one of a whole row of machines, where an attendant helped me, and then go through the turnstiles, where I managed, I believe, to open the turnstile to my left instead of the one in front of me as intended, and got exasperated until another attendant helped me there. It was rather humiliating, though amusing. It was still awfully hot, by the way. Finding the train that stops at Nostrand Avenue was a pain, too, but I was directed to the Flatbush Ave. line (the right one), by a grey-goateed New Yorker who came up to me as I was helplessly looking at the brochures and asked me, in broad accent, "Are you lawst?" My intentions of not being visibly touristy are evidently fated not to be realized.

After a long while a tremendously long metal train arrived, and we had to go far, far down the platform to the front of it. When I got out at Nostrand Ave., I realized that going to New York on my own is quite possibly one of the stupidest things I have ever done. It was merely a long platform, no information, no anything, on a dark street in a poor neighbourhood of shabby little chicken take-out places and old brick houses and bleak newer housing. I didn't know how to get to the bus station that would take me further. I stopped under a light to take out the notebook where I had scrawled the very insufficient directions, when a black man in his late twenties or so stopped and told me for my own good that I shouldn't take out money on that street (which I wasn't doing anyway, but point taken). He made a determined effort to instill trust in me and to prevent me from being afraid -- which was unnecessary as no matter what he intended specifically he was essentially nice and I was not afraid -- by showing a card with his name on it, asking me to look directly into his eyes, etc. Which sounds very dubious, but was all right in the event. Then he hailed one of the blank white taxis that were cruising through the neighbourhood, but I was dubious about them, especially after having forked over a good deal of money to a driver who had no idea where the intersection where I had to go to was. After stating my determination to get out at the next bus station to wait for a bus and ask the driver for directions, the man who was helping me hastily stepped out, after asking for money as compensation for being "taken out of his environment"; I take this to mean that this neighbourhood was not safe for him.

After waiting for the bus, very glad that the cab driver had let me out of the car, as I was rather worried he wouldn't, in the rain, for many minutes, with the white taxis beeping as they passed to offer their services, I finally went to a cigarette store and asked the two men there if they could call a taxi for me. It turns out that this was probably like asking a plumbing union, on strike, if they know any plumbers who could fix my sink. At any rate, then one of them hailed another inofficial taxi for me, after a charade intended to convince me of its trustworthiness (the shop person asked the cabbie for his number in case he has to take a cab eventually, too). The driver took me to the intersection where the hostel is. I handed over the 8 dollars the driver had asked for; perhaps the price was excessive, but I was so happy at reaching the right place that I let him keep 10 dollars. The driver had the same smirk as one of the cigarette store owners, implying that I was hopelessly dumb, but at that point I simply didn't care; I was not slow to pick up on deception, but unable to tell how to counteract it, and willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. If I was exploited, at least there are three people who are not especially wealthy walking around a little the richer for it. Tant mieux.

The hostel is a modest old building, which appeared in the dark to have no sign indicating its nature at all. It is quite friendly, though not the cleanest. The owner showed me up to bed right away, and I gave up on the idea of showering, changed into my pyjamas, and prepared to sleep. Unfortunately the blanket, though freshly washed like the sheets, had feces or some similar substance on it, but by that point I didn't care at all. I pushed the blanket to the foot of my bed and huddled under my coat instead. It was cold at times, it was hard to go to sleep, and the toothache was worrying away at me as much as ever. As I tossed and turned in the middle of the night, I was wondering if I should give up this trip, find the earliest flight, and return to New York. But I must stay at the hostel at least two nights, an earlier flight would probably cost more, and I still think that returning to Berlin now would mean giving up finding what to do once and for all.

Anyway, it's snowing, and it's daylight, and I feel more cheerful about everything now after e-mailing home and writing this. Besides, some past travelling experiences may not have been more awful but they felt much more awful. It's still an adventure, there are nicer parts of the city to visit, and I want to prove to myself that I can be brave.

A Second Castle in Spain

Unfortunately the bad mood of yesterday is not all gone, but it is much better. I've become something of an expert at deploying tricks to regain a serene state of mind; these tricks are not more complicated than applying moderate doses of activities that are at once cheering and sedating, like reading and music. In the evening I researched and drafted a preliminary outline of the places I'll see in New York, and now that most of that is over (I should still research bus routes, train routes, and bakeries), it's quite a relief.

On the piano I practiced the E flat major and minor scales (the whole caboodle: ordinary scales, four-note chords, arpeggios, chromatic scales, and diminished and dominant sevenths; legato and staccato and detached). I also endeavoured to memorize another half page of Beethoven's Sonata appassionata and to become more familiar with Rachmaninoff's Prelude in g minor (Op.23 No.5). Then I played these pieces:

J.S. Bach: Concerto in d minor, Mvt. 1
Well-Tempered Clavier, Preludio IX (E major)

Schumann: Kinderszenen (No. 1-4 and 6)
Albumblätter, "Impromptu"

Schubert: Sonata in B flat major (D960), Mvt. 1

C.P.E. Bach: Solfeggio in c minor

Beethoven: Deutsche Tänze, 1-7
Bagatelles (Op. 119), No. 1
Sonata in c# minor ("Moonlight"), Op. 27 No. 2

Bedrich Smetana: Song, Op. 2 No. 2

John Field: Nocturne No. 5 in B flat major

Astor Piazzolla: Milonga del ángel

Claude Debussy: Page d'album

Perhaps a week ago I realized that I could devote myself to playing music for much of my life and be content with that. At moments my playing still is or seems horrid, but it has been much more horrid, and the chances seem better now that I can play an entire piece without distracting errors and with good technique, expression, and intuition. Secondly, learning music theory and history, and practicing scales, no longer hold the terrors for me they once did; I've long felt that the true test of my devotion to a field is my willingness to plough (for lack of a more exalted metaphor) staunchly onward even through its stony and arid patches. Thirdly, I've grown into the music much more and become much less self-conscious. I only wish that I knew if I was middling, good, or, in some respects, great.

So the whim has seized me to send an audition CD to Juilliard for early admissions in February. I am probably atrociously overrating my abilities, and might convert this plan into a more modest one. But at least a miracle has occurred in the shape of me playing scales and finger exercises without hating every minute of it, and purposely memorizing pieces for the first time in at least two years. It also provides me with an agreeable aim. The repertoire that I am learning for the CD or some other purpose is the D major preludium-and-fugue pair from the Well-Tempered Clavier (Bk. II), Sonata appassionata, Kinderszenen, and Rachmaninoff's prelude. I think it's a good programme: varied yet not wholly dissimilar, not boring, sound as a "narrative arc" (to employ a most pretentious phrase), and put together from some of my favourite music.

To Be or Not to Be (Discussed at Exorbitant Length)

I'll be in New York from December 15th to 24th; the airline tickets ($594.79 US in total) are booked, and the hostel rooms ($155.00 US) reserved. Though I am certain that, despite the stresses of travel, the journey will be enjoyable once it's underway, my feelings presently are in a state of turmoil that is not happy. Even though it is only a little trip to determine whether I would like to live in New York or whether I've formed a wrong idea of it, it feels like the throw of the dice that will decide my entire future. I have tried to think soberly what to do if I decide not to move there after all, or don't find work there, but on the whole I think I'd be very depressed if that were the case. It is the one thing I have really looked forward to, aside from my friend's visit and our travels this summer, in years. So it is exciting but also terrifying.

What bothers me, too, is the worry that my parents and relatives (will) disapprove. Of course I say that I need to live in a way that contents me, but the other side is that I've always been afraid of disapproval and it drains my self-confidence. My plans are mostly quixotic, but often enough I am only formulating them and building them out in my mind to cheer me up and give me some hope for the future instead of the customary dread; besides, if they are practicable and worthwhile, only very difficult to carry out, I think it's unkind to discourage me from pursuing them.

Anyway, I want to be completely honest now, and I am writing what follows partly so that I don't have to think it within myself the whole time, and partly because it's probably interesting as a psychological case study. For a long time I haven't understood why I still exist, or existed in the first place. Up until Grade 11 I felt that life was going somewhere, and now it only feels like an endless and empty coda. It is childish of me to still harp on the subject, but in a way I feel as if my school years after Grade 7 stole my future. I don't know what I am good at or what I want to do, and whatever talents I have are totally underdeveloped; then, not only did my bad grades undermine my belief in myself and conversely make me stop caring about grades because the criteria by which they were given were too absurd and arbitrary, but they also deprived me of any chance of entering any of the "best" universities, which I wanted to enter not for the sake of the degree or subsequent job but because I thought that they would teach me the most. I still don't know whether I am stupid or intelligent, a good writer or a bad one (my spelling and grammar are good, and my vocabulary is extensive, but that isn't everything), and a good musician or a bad one. Of course much blame can be put on me, too, but the system was utterly unsuited. Then there are, in addition, the years of being at the bottom of the social hierarchy among my classmates, so that I'm still hermity and absolutely afraid of people my own age five years later.

It also seems as if, whenever there has been an opportunity for something to move forward, it hasn't happened, except for UBC (after the gap year), which then petered out after the second year when it was clear that I hadn't the motivation to continue, and the move to Germany. I have done hours of job-searching, and applied to some five jobs for which I thought I was really suited, and nothing has happened. I research travelling to places, buying an apartment, etc., on the internet, and it isn't carried out. On the surface of it, it looks as if I were doing nothing, but it would have looked as if I were doing a lot if anyone had decided to employ me. On the other hand, it is quite evident that, firstly, it was wrong to expect that in the future things just happen to one, because they don't; and, secondly, one does have to do astronomical quantities of job-searching and send out huge numbers of applications if one does actually want to get work (except through connections, which I don't want to use and only could if I really made an effort, as I don't think that being on speaking terms with the influential Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so, or having the same third cousin as one's boss, is a valid job qualification, etc.). My dabbling won't cut it, and I wish it had been clearer to me from the outset that, under the circumstances, it may truly not be my fault if the job-search is unproductive.

Then I have the sense that I am completely unimportant to anyone. If I were to move to New York, I would leave a gap in the family, because I've been around for twenty-three years and have on the whole been a pleasant element. But the last time I was an actually agreeable influence on the lives of more than ten people was probably when I was still publishing the family newsletter, which managed to amuse a goodly circle of relatives and friends. Besides, I am not truly close to anyone. I've never been able to share my problems well with other people, either because I can't analyze the problems succinctly, or they are boring and too abstract, or I doubt that anyone would understand, or I don't want to burden anyone. Though I can talk to my parents about most things, and can confide the harmless portions of my experience to my siblings, I don't even do that often.

At any rate, the worst problem is the previously mentioned fear of not doing anything in life except being befallen by one unhappy event or despairing mood after another, wherefore I wish that I could cut the whole miserable thing short. In July I did get terribly close to suicide, and I planned things out as far as is possible with an impulse like that. But I have come to the conclusion that it is not an option. Though, at the age of sixteen, I was certain that no one would be very sad when I died because I wasn't at all loveable, I figure now that tears would be shed, if only out of pity for life cut prematurely short, etc., and that I'd cast a gloom over everyone who likes me and possibly provoke a lot of emotional turmoil. I don't want to inflict that. Secondly, though people will have to feel bad when I die sooner or later, I figure that it's nicer to go out in God's own good time, with dignity, and that God's own good time and dignity do not involve a gory and violent scene of slit wrists. Thirdly, I like comfort and find self-injurious impulses instinctively repellent. Lastly, while I'm given the opportunity to live I might as well do something worthwhile with it. So, as I've said, suicide is not an option. Only from time to time I think of it when I feel powerless again, and more often I do think I'd like to be in heaven (its boringness as depicted in popular culture no longer being much of an objection).

In the end, once I've taken as my premise that dying is not an option, it's clear that I might as well face things bravely and make the best of them. (Which might not be precisely what I was doing in this post; but I don't want to complain, only explain how things are.) I also know that lots of people are suicidal; it's a part of life and one can get past it. Also, such feelings, though they are awful at the time, aren't the worst I've known; it is far easier being unhappy but feeling that there is a way out, than being unhappy but feeling that there is no way out. So, with the exception of my second year at UBC, I haven't been this contented since Grade 7; it's only that inaction and hopelessness encourage this sort of thought more than active stress does.

Long story short, I can deal with all sorts of things, and have done it for a long time, and will continue to do so, on my own. If I do something stupid, honestly I don't feel that anyone else is responsible, or should feel so. What I'd only like is to be trusted and respected as an adult, and treated as a reasonable and independent being, and not to be judged all the time. And if I can at least try to follow my whims and dreams in peace, I'll be eternally grateful.

The Bear and the Rooster

There may be lots of inaccuracies in this, but it's after 2 a.m. and I want to go to sleep. So I'll post it as is, with my apologies.

* * *

This evening T., Ge., J. and I betook ourselves to the Philharmonic, braving the chills of this snowy day, passing across the rimy grass at the Kulturforum, and wandering briefly under the sky where the ghostly white clouds strayed across the blackness. Inside it was perfectly warm, and we wended our way through the great, bright foyer and the flocks of quietly cheerful or quietly hostile concertgoers, decidedly belonging to the quietly cheerful camp. Our seats were perched above stage level out in front, and we had a good view of all musicians, save the basses at the rightmost nook of the stage. There was an impressive array of chairs, for a veritable army of violinists, violists, cellists, bassists, flautists, oboists, bassoonists, trombonists, percussionists, and trumpeters. There was a celesta, two cymbals, a gong, big crimson drum, tambourine, two timpani, a triangle and xylophone, etc. The golden parquet, the blond wood chairs, the dark brown of the basses, and the copper glare of the timpani formed a most pleasing tableau as we waited for their occupants to enter.

The light on the stage became more glaring, the musicians filed in, the tardier portion of the audience straggled in, and the conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, strode onto the stage in evidently excellent spirits. Then the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin began to play Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini. Before the concert I had read up on the tale that inspired it. It comes from a passage in Dante's Inferno, where the wandering protagonist interrupts his journey through the eponymous nether regions in order to parley with old acquaintances whom he finds in the region allotted to lusty sinners. Francesca had married some person who apparently wasn't too agreeable, when she and her brother-in-law Paolo decided to read Arthurian romances together. They came as far as the episode with Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, and never went further, for they were unwisely inspired to a spot of kissing; at which point the husband (who is going to hell too, only later, as Dante helpfully informs us) stopped by, flew into a jealous rage, and stabbed them both to death. As for the music, it was the Ride of the Valkyries without the horn theme, just the strings wuthering up and down the scale, like demons flitting and swooping, hither and thither, through the atmosphere of hell. Then there was a peaceful episode where one of the woodwinds, possibly a cor anglais, had a lyrical solo, followed by pastorally amorous string passages and a fleeting answer by the flute (the man was evidently the more talkative entity in this relationship). Then the Ride was back, as were the fortissimo passages that had a hectic effect on my blood pressure, hammering in the point that the couple were pretty darn damned. Then the music came to an end with four or so thunderous whacks of the timpani, which I surmised were the stabs of the angry husband.

After a break for applause, it was on to Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2, with the soloist Lisa Batiashvili, who was born in Tbilisi and presently lives in Munich. Her opening phrase was very beautiful, and she brought out the individuality of her violin's tone excellently. Altogether the touch was lyrical but not self-indulgently so, and the technique was inconspicuously irreproachable, as is ideal. The overall physical approach was a very athletic one, with much bending and so on, but it wasn't painful to watch even for one as humourless about theatrics as I. The violinist was absorbed in the conductor's direction and turned often to face and consult him, with a disregard for the audience that was rather likeable and an even more likeable lack of the knowing smirks that often characterize these consultations. She is decidedly not a lady-violinist, and there was a refreshing absence of revealing gowns, lavish make-up, and of the showily "graceful" movements that are often employed to emphasize a violiniste's femininity for the sake of CD and ticket sales.

What I missed in this concerto was the Russian character which, I think, could have been found and and should have been brought forth, even though the piece is in my view principally an attempt to mimick the French modernists. Mostly this concerto was not my cup of tea, though it could be worse, being an experimental jumble of disparate and insignificant motifs, which can be rendered palatable through a glowing tone and a whimsical imaginativeness of interpretation, but which is not particularly worthwhile. (I doubt that the previous sentence could have been snobbier, but oh, well.) In any case, there were many curtain calls and an encore. There the soloist played a Georgian folksong, to the accompaniment of four or so of the string players in the orchestra, which everyone visibly enjoyed.

*Intermission* (Where we stay in our seats and chatter cheerfully.)

After the break came Debussy's Jeux, which was essentially a stream of effects: strings evoking the sweeping of leaves here, cascading of the harps there, and that sort of thing. But it was agreeable while it lasted — not going anywhere really, but not boring. Theoretically I have much more use for Tchaikovsky than I have for Debussy, but these Jeux were much more distinctively and originally Debussy than Francesca da Rimini was distinctively and originally Tchaikovsky. Oddly enough, I even liked Ravel, for whom I don't have much use apart from some famous orchestral piece whose name I've presently forgotten.

The Ravel was, specifically, a rendering of Daphnis and Chloe, an old Greek tale of a sheep-herding foster brother and sister to whom it is revealed that they adore each other after much bucolic bliss. This is yet another species of romantic tale that I don't find at all romantic, as there is no surer way of leading a stifling and claustrophobic existence than marrying a person who has an identical upbringing and life experience. Anyway, as Ravel interpreted the tale, there was a very morning-ish (or, to employ a term from one of my online novels, matutinal) opening, burgeoning with clichés like trilling flutes for birds and scales on the harps and strings for the rising of the sun or who knows what. Then there was, fittingly, a great deal of the aforementioned bucolic bliss, woodland oboes and hunting horns and the like. It was hilariously over-the-top, very sweeping, and every musical instrument had its moment. I was much more excited than I should be at my mature years by all the interesting instruments, and squealed internally when, for instance, the triangle or the piccolo flute made its appearance, or when the harps had a phrase or so. Altogether the music was familiar; it resembles the score to every black-and-white film ever made. Apparently Wagner and Ravel were the alpha and omega of Hollywood composers.

Altogether my impression, not being used to comparing orchestras or knowing what is good or bad, was that the orchestra was very good and that its tone was especially remarkable. It may be balderdash, but I once read that different orchestras choose different approaches to the bowing, so that in the Israeli Philharmonic the players are permitted to find their own bowing, which apparently leads to an interesting, if a trifle anarchic, multiplicity of sound; in this case the bows of the strings rose and fell in an incredibly unisono movement. The unwieldy contingent of musicians was capable of astounding lightness and versatility as well as swelling sound, the dialogue that ran from the strings to the woodwinds and from the violins through the cellos to the basses and so on ran fluidly, and above all I thought that the tone was quite lovely. The music did not have an overly rehearsed effect at all; it was alive. What I thought was missing was the edge that would have counteracted the intermittent tendency to be nearly lush.

At the end we reemerged into the cold, cold air, running across the Kulturforum to the bus station to grow warmer, and then waiting in a literal huddle for the bus to arrive. Yet we were in a good mood. I'm glad that I'm beginning to enjoy my outings wholeheartedly — instead of going somewhere on my own initiative and on my own, out of a sense of duty, only to feel depressed by how little I get out of it — and also that I'm bothering to read up on things before I go. In the process of doing the latter, I have, for instance, discovered a very nice biography (over several webpages) of Prokofiev.

P.S.: The subject line is probably highly incongruous, but the rationale behind it is that, since bears are sort of Russian and the rooster is an emblem of France, these animals represent the nationalities of the composers.

Tales of the Idler

Mama is in the kitchen preparing what promises to be a most delectable lentil casserole, compounded of bacon, onions, carrots, leek, parsnip, celery root, parsley, green and pale orange lentils, etc. T. is back from university; Gi. and Ge. and J. are back from school; and Papa should return from work shortly. It is already dark outside, and from the whishing of the cars along the road I surmise that it is lightly raining.

I woke up at around 1 p.m., as Papa left for university, having been up after 3:30 a.m., and then lay there trying to shake off the last sleepiness. At last I got up, wrapped one of our green plaid flannel blankets around my shoulders, breakfasted on a slice of raisin bread with butter (simple but delicious), and then peregrinated over to the corner room. There I perched gingerly on the edge of hot stove; let the chocolate that remains from Papa's purchases of yesterday melt in my mouth, square by square; and read more of Jane Eyre. I've reached the point where the heroine has returned to Gateshead Manor to visit her dying aunt, stays there a month, studies the curiously contrasting pair of her cousins Eliza and Georgiana, and then travels back to Thornfield. Besides, I showered, sat at my laptop and glanced at the news. When Ge. was at home again, we watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and, later with J., The Colbert Report. The guest on the Daily Show was Sir David Frost, who makes a good impression as an intelligent and witty and well-informed representative of the traditional England that I like, and one who is very good at what he does (though surprisingly indistinct in his speech for a broadcaster) and very interested in it.

Last night I read The Cromptons, by Mary Jane Holmes. It is set at first in rural Florida, and then in some other American state whose identity escapes me, and it is the tale of a colonel who secretly marries beneath him and then abandons his uneducated wife, only to adopt the daughter when the wife dies. The daughter, rendered careless in part by the uncertainty about the identity of her father, runs off to marry her music-teacher. Then the tale skips ahead to the fortunes of a young schoolteacher who is sought by two gentlemen, and it falls into its expected course. Anyway, not great literature, certainly, and the more melodramatic plot points don't so much interest me, but despite the unrealism it is still an interesting window on the America of the author's time, i.e. around the Civil War (though the author rarely touches on it directly), reasonably well and vividly written, and not devoid of humour. What interests me too is that Miss or Mrs. Holmes writes about mentally ill people in a humane and not in a stigmatizing way, and depicts them living in their homes, with family, instead of being shut away in institutions.

Besides, I've been proofreading pages of scanned-in books for Distributed Proofreaders, which supplies gutenberg.org with its texts. I did so at university, too, but it took a long time because I was much more afraid of making errors and my attention span was shorter than it is now. (One of the great benefits of the past two years is that I am regaining the ability to focus on things properly, which I lost during teenagerhood and which was not much improved even at UBC.) I mostly look at books that have been in the queue for a very long time: French and Spanish histories and novels, musicological works, etc. It's excellent for freshening up and expanding my knowledge of both languages, and there are very absorbing books among them to which I would not otherwise be exposed, due to my predilection for fiction. For instance, the French historian Hippolyte Taine, in his great opus on the story of English literature, launches a tirade on the inane questions that St. Thomas Aquinas asked à propos of the Bible (e.g. Was the dove of the Holy Spirit an actual animal?), before opining with apparent regret that he was still the greatest theologian of his age — given the exile of Abélard and somebody else. The French writers are also generally remarkable for the fluency and purity of their style.

Otherwise I have been mulling a new story, set during World War I, which will unfortunately remain a tale that I should not like to show anyone else, unless a miracle occurs and I manage to make it more sober, well-rounded, realistic, and intellectual. I don't like writing stories merely for the exercise of developing plot, character, etc., even if they are entertaining, if I can't feel proud of them in the end. Above all, the substance is lacking. Of course I am pleased that I have started or completed more stories this year than I have in all my life before that, but quality is more important than quantity. In principle I would prefer to wait until I am capable of writing a truly worthwhile story, and in the meantime devote myself to blogging, reading, meditating, and furnishing my cranial dome as well as I can. As for attempting to write an unintelligent bestseller, I'd only like to do that if it could be unpretentious, goodhearted, and perfectly written in its modest way, and still possess sincerity and substance at its core. Perhaps that is a paradox.

Winter is setting in, and it is quite evident I won't be in New York in January, but I am bearing it with equanimity, or rather equanimity has descended upon me quite irrespective of my own exertions, and it's best to enjoy it while it lasts. Of course there will be the inevitable depression, but, as serious as they become, I've become used to battling blue devils, and as long as it's only my own moods that I have to fight, not any unfamiliar external problems, I know that they are surmountable. As for my particular blue devils, I think of them as my "maladie imaginaire." It is imaginary because it is emotional stress and desperation caused by worrying about my life, even though I am otherwise quite happy. It's reached the point, however, where I am convinced that worrying about the future, unless this worry produces some positive action, is counterproductive. In retrospect, I've figured out that, for the first year when we lived here in Berlin, I used to intentionally worry in order to punish myself for not earning money for my upkeep, but this is neither healthy nor helpful, which is why I no longer do it. Nor is there much use in worrying about what other people think; first of all, a valid criticism would require a greater understanding of my character and circumstances than anyone except my parents possesses, and, secondly, I am the one who has to live with myself and with the decisions I make. I take the effect of actions on my parents and siblings into account, for as I live with them these actions affect them directly, but otherwise there is no obligation to anyone except Ego.

The Well-Tempered Concertgoer

It already happened two days ago, but T. and Ge. and J. and I went to a concert at the Berlin Philharmonic, and here is an account of it. I very much dislike the practice of making dogmatic statements that may be totally untrue, without admitting in manner or speech that this is the case, but it is also bothersome to write "I think" or "it seems that" all the time, so I'll just state at the beginning that these are merely my thoughts. If the style is pompous, I would also like to remind the reader that this is, after all, a music review. If I can dispense with stream-of-consciousness references to impressionism and the like, that's already a considerable achievement. (c:

***

The pianist was Hélène Grimaud and the programme was Bach and Beethoven. She began by playing the Prelude and Fugue in c minor, the 2nd set in the 1st volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The prelude is a rhythmic flurry of notes, which she executed with a romantic flow, in a way that may not be quintessentially Bach-ian but that fit in well to the overarching concept of her concert; the fugue is a lightly troubled series of questions and answers, which she executed with a likewise luminous tone.

She moved on to the Prelude and Fugue in c# minor (4th set, 1st volume), which are very slow and sombre, and, in my experience, somehow awkward to play because the many sharps have a thickening effect on the tone. (I sometimes think, though it may be complete nonsense, that Bach and Händel "engineered" this thickening on purpose in their music, so that the thin sounds of the harpsichord would be richer.) There she brought out the sacral element well – the prelude brings to mind the strains of an organ in an empty church, and if the Philharmonic were a cathedral and the concert were being filmed, a camera would have been panning the soaring stained glass windows – and the tone was beautifully fit to bring out the melody to its full advantage. But the fugues are at times an unforgiving tangle of thoughts, and this one, through no fault of the performer, felt interminable.

The third Prelude and Fugue, in d minor (6th set, 2nd volume), are less my cup of tea than the others. They are a desultory wandering that, to be a bit mean, is fine background music, for instance at that point in a concert where everyone is inclined to snooze and even the performer has been hypnotized out of his self-consciousness, but not in itself so meaningful. As often happens in Bach pieces, the first bars pose a problem whose solution neither promises to be particularly interesting nor, most likely, even exists. In concrete terms, I suppose what I mean is that you always expect the minor key to be resolved into a major key, or the theme to progress into another theme (not a weird intellectual one, but one that is hummable), but nothing of the sort happens, which feels unsatisfactory. It is like the rambling Gregorian chants; they are quite beautiful as a process, but a dreadful bore if you have to sit down for an hour or so and listen to them as a performance. What is rather interesting is how Bach's preludes often have the effect of starting in medias res, which is to say, in the midst of the action.

Then Hélène Grimaud launched on Ferruccio Busoni's rewriting of Bach's chaconne (familiar as part of the violin repertoire), BWV 1004. Here her skills were most apparent. While her earlier rendering of Bach was too fluent and frictionless, and she was playing it with so resplendent a polish that it sounded as if she was playing it in an empty room for a recording (Papa told me later that her concert programme was, in fact, taken from her new CD), the conviction that Bach was not so much for her was dispelled as she gradually got into the mood. But what made her rendering of this work especially good was that, like a fine ballet dancer, she contrived to make the effort seem effortless. She did not assume virtuoso airs because of the piece's difficulty, and instead she played the octave scales, chromatic scales, etc., with an elegant sensitivity that made music out of something that otherwise bears a tiresomely close resemblance to finger exercises.

When this piece was over – with brio of course – there was a brief pause for applause, and then she started again with a Prelude and Fugue in a minor (20th set, 2nd volume), which were the epitome of desultory wandering, and very much an anticlimax. I thought that they, and the following work (i.e. Liszt's reworking of another a minor Prelude and Fugue, BWV 543), could profitably have been left out of the programme. To employ a geographical metaphor, in between the massive continental plates of the first and second halves of the programme, they were like an insignificant and superfluous fragment of oceanic crust. For a while I considered how the programme might have been constructed differently; probably it would have worked to play a more energetic and interesting pair of pieces, capable of standing on their own, instead.

*Intermission*

After the intermission, the programme moved on to Beethoven's Sonata in E major, Op. 109, one of the composer's last. (Frankly, I dislike the beginning so much that, in my peregrinations through the later sonatas, it has consistently been skipped; so it was mostly terra incognita to me.) As Hélène Grimaud played it, it was very satisfactory and recognizable as Beethoven, in his pleasant classical phase. It has much of the clarity and loveliness that is more characteristic of Mozart. The theme of the andante movement is remarkable for its rather lovely gravitas, too, and she did due justice to it. Sadly, the variations on the theme were not so great, I thought. Beethoven's variations for cello and piano are diverse and imaginative to the point of genius (the only rivals I can think of are Bach's Goldberg Variations), but his variations for piano solo are at times terribly uninspired. Maybe he tended to find it more important to finish a work, imperfect or not, than to perfect it and beautify it during the writing of it.

The concert ended with Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E major (9th set, 2nd volume) and a Prelude in E major (BWV 1006) that was reworked by Sergei Rachmaninoff. For some reason I can't remember this last prelude, but the prelude and fugue I like, and the pianist played them well. They evoke the ringing of church bells, engaging in a quid pro quo and a mutual echoing: the prelude is higher-pitched and livelier, bringing to mind little bells like those in a carillon, whereas the fugue is lower-pitched and more ponderous, bringing to mind the truly weighty bells.

After these pieces, the vigorous clapping went on for minutes and minutes. There were ca. seven call-backs, an adorable incident where a young lad came to the stage with a bouquet and handed it up to Hélène Grimaud, who then shook his hand, and two encores. The first encore was, I thought, something by Scriabin or Ravel; the second encore sounded very much like a Rachmaninoff prelude reft of the melody and the sense (fault of composer, not of performer).

In fine, to use an old expression, there are four questions that help me determine what I think of a performance in its entirety. Firstly, would I want to hear the performance again? Secondly, do I remember the music (not the opus number but the music itself) that was played? Thirdly, do I love the music that was played? Lastly, do I want to go home and play the music myself? – In the course of the past two days I've thought about them, and the answer to all of them is an enthusiastic yes. (There were, of course, exceptions that I mentioned above, but there always are.) This is, after all, the first time when I've gone out of a concert cheerfully, though perhaps annoyingly, humming part of the programme.

***

In other news, yesterday the family celebrated St. Martin's with an aunt, uncle, cousin, and two friends. Mama put up lanterns, cooked gulash, and deep-fried the incredibly rich Pöfferkes; besides, there were mandarin oranges, nuts, gingerbread, Printen (a dentist's nightmare, being an exceedingly tough variant of gingerbread, mined with large sugar crystals), Spekulatius, and Pfeffernüsse. Though I was tired by 11:30 and went to bed early (my sleeping hours are now orthodox but peculiarly short; even though I could sleep in, I somehow don't), it was most enjoyable. The conversation was extremely entertaining, as usual. After dissections of American politics and politicians, the talk turned to children's literature (old friends like The Little Princess, The Hobbit, and the Narnia series), abbreviated parodies of German poems, Sviatoslav Richter, films like Quantum of Solace, etc. Which reminds me that I would like to take the opportunity to say that I find The Hobbit much better than Lord of the Rings, because it is more healthy and less kitschy, and that I like the Ring films, though I infinitely prefer them when I can skip the tedious scenes (the Aragorn and Arwen nonsense, for instance). As far as German children's literature goes, what was discussed especially is a new film based on Otfried Preußler's book Krabat; I read it some seven years ago and found it too dark and oppressive, as opposed to the author's delightful lighthearted fare like Die Kleine Hexe, Hörbe, Wanja, etc., which I've enjoyed long after I was too old for them. Anyway, I might have said a lot yesterday evening where I didn't contribute a peep of conversation, but the preference for listening over talking is still firmly engrained in me, especially as I have little practice in formulating ideas on the spur of the moment (which is admittedly something I should work on), and moreover always was and always will be a trifle slow on the uptake.

The Day After

Last night I woke up at around midnight (my schedule is still screwy) and began to follow the election results as well as I could. The AP has a map that helpfully refreshed itself, and was the best thing of its kind that I came across in my press roamings. Then I stayed with the live webstream of CBS's coverage, with Katie Couric and Jeff Greenfield and Bob Schieffer (whom I officially like considerably now). The anchors were in an enjoyably good mood. Whenever there was not much happening I read a book.

At first the AP map was disturbing, as there were unexpectedly high results for McCain in several states, but these clearly represented very right-leaning districts. I was thoroughly worried until, in the course of the early morning, I heard that Obama had won Ohio. Then the results trickled in, and in, and then Virginia was called in his favour. I went back to my CBS video (this was at ca. 5 a.m.), hoping that they would mention it, and then Katie Couric unexpectedly said that Barack Obama had won the election, and that the local stations would return to their regular programming. Still skeptical, I went for confirmation to other sources, and CNN and ABC and the AP map had called the election, too. Shortly thereafter John McCain gave his speech in Phoenix, which speech was indeed very conciliatory, I thought, and procured him a graceful exit. I think he was relieved not to be elected president.

Going to the CBS coverage again, an African-American guest showed a photo that he keeps on his desk, of black garbage workers striking for their dignity, and then mentioned that he wanted to telephone his mother, his standard American slipping more and more into a Southern dialect in the emotion of the moment. It was very moving, and I began to cry, a trifle hysterically, trying to be as quiet as possible because everyone else was sleeping. T. woke up, and asked what was up and whether I was happy or sad, and then I calmed down. Then I saw the footage of the Rev. Jesse Jackson standing in a crowd with tears streaming down his face.

Altogether what I love about this election night (and post-election day) is the cheerfulness of the news anchors (the BBC World News anchor was thoroughly chipper this afternoon, and I thought that the economist and Nobel laureate who spoke at one point about the future of the American economy was choking up a little with joy), the gracious comments by McCain voters that I've seen on the internet, and the elation that comes with the feeling that most people are decent. What is still more incredible is that George W. Bush actually seemed at ease and even cheerful when he congratulated Obama. Also, in the eight years that I have "known" Condoleezza Rice, she has never seemed sympathetic until the moment today where, soft-eyed and trembling on the verge of alternate tears and smiles, she made her own personal statement on the election results at a State Department press conference.

What I missed was the jubilation here in Berlin. I personally felt that honking cars, cheers, balloons, and who knows what else would have been in order. Instead it was an extraordinarily quiet day, grey and twilightish. Even when I went for a walk to Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate, the only symptoms of the election were the unenthusiastic conversations of two or three passersby, and a small Obama campaign sign, in the window of an Ebony hair salon, that said "Change we can believe in." Also, I felt the most benignant I am ever likely to feel again at the sight of the massive and soulless architectural bore that is our American Embassy.

On the whole I have been much more thoughtful and even sad today, than jubilant. A portion of it is that California has voted to ban gay marriage, and Arizona and Florida have voted to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, which is hard for me to understand. (At least it's a good day for marijuana, medical in Michigan, and in general in Massachusetts.) A portion of it may also be a "spiritual hangover" from the past eight years of Bush and the past two years of unbearably protracted campaigning. But, above all, there are so many problems that Obama will have to confront. Dmitri Medvedev's speech (which I thought rather abhorrent) was not a good start. I have been, and perhaps most of us have been, conditioned into being very uncertain that events that promise to be good will fulfill that promise. So I fervently hope that those who transcended their traditional party affiliation and prejudices to vote for Obama will not be disappointed, and, even more fervently, I hope that his capable mind and his upright character will translate into a presidency that will truly benefit the people of America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

But I believe that we must do what we can (in my case, as a foreigner, not much) and have faith. As long as we try to do the right thing, hour by hour and day by day, in small matters as well as in great ones, it will turn out all right.

And, to end on that hopeful note, here are passages from a speech given in Washington, D.C., forty-five years ago, by a southern preacher:

[. . .] even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

[. . .]

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

[. . .]

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

November the Fourth

P.S.: Photoshopped scan of real four-leafed clover, picked in 2006. It brought me luck, so I thought I'd "share the wealth."

Coals and Cauldrons

It has been a quiet but agreeable Halloween. Papa is still in Glasgow and Gi. is still at Uncle Pu's and K.'s house, and T. was not particularly lively because she had spent the night (very much to my admiration, by the way) finishing her homework for university, hence the quietness. At around noon the coal for our stoves arrived and Mama eventually lit a fire in the corner room. I am huddling in one of our impressively good sleeping bags anyway, but for the first time in many months I have been able to assume my favourite perch on top of the oven, without it being cold as a tomb.

We watched television together — news of the American elections and of the Congo, glimpses of an apparently terrible docudrama on Martin Luther (the wedding scene with Katherine Bora, or I presume it was that, looked like a made-for-TV romance, except that the groom wore a monastic garb and coiffure) that aired in honour of Reformation Day, and the Halloween special of The Simpsons (which we have not watched in ages). Normally I am ambiguous about Halloween, because I don't like the garishness and mindless-consumption aspects of it, and I don't like horror films or stories. But I do like candy and pumpkins, and at times I like costumes — which, I suppose, makes me sound like a four-year-old, but what do I care. (c: As far as the Simpsons Halloween specials go, my favourites are the tale of the time-travel toaster oven and the riff on Edgar Allan Poe's "Raven." Once I did undergo a sinister Raven- (or Birds-)like scenario; it was on a chilly dawn after I had stayed up all night, and I was passing innocently along the kitchen counter when I heard a thumping, so I looked up, and there was a crow standing on the skylight and pecking at the glass, its beady expressionless eyes fixed in my direction. I was quite glad to get out of its line of sight.

Anyway, so J. went shopping for candy, and then we whiled away the hours at our computers as evening fell. In the course of said evening, two trick-or-treating groups came to the door, and Mama offered them chocolate bars. All of the sugar candy had been dumped into bowls, one for us and one for Papa and Gi., and we nibbled away at it in the meantime. Fortunately there was plenty of chocolate left for us, too. It is a pity that we hadn't any pumpkins, because in Victoria it was fun to carve them and to roast the seeds that were in the interior, and oddly I liked the musky scent that rises from the pumpkin flesh as the tealight heats and bakes the inside of the lid. (Then, less enjoyably, there was the fruit's inevitable disintegration into pale pulp, much accelerated by the onset of frost. But at least it was a fresh supply of nitrogen for the soil!) A last reason why I like Halloween is, by the way, that it is one of the dates that I psychologically clung to during my school years as the forerunners of Advent and Christmas.

After we had eaten our fill, Ge. and J. dressed up as a 19th-century gentleman and as a woodcutter, respectively. The first costume consisted of dark jeans (I think), a shirt, and a woolly grey vest; the second consisted of jeans, an orange flannel-like plaid shirt, a cap, and an ax. As for their faces, they had held a saucer over a candle so that it was coated in soot, then they dabbed the soot onto their visages to create heavy black eyebrows, a mustache, and, in Ge.'s case, impressive mutton chops. I was considering dressing up as someone from the 60s, but I haven't the least notion how to do a beehive hairdo, etc., so this year I was "person who couldn't be bothered to change out of her pyjamas." Which was a trifle awkward, because I dislike being seen in my pyjamas (it makes me feel guilty about not being ladylike and proper), and so when the people to deliver the coal came, I ducked into our tiny pantry and contemplated the courtyard for something like a quarter of an hour.