Last night I stayed up late hopping from one internet browser tab to the other, which is one of my favourite pastimes. On one of the tabs I watched a movie based on the Bleach animé series. The last animé film I watched properly is Kiki's Delivery Service, a reasonably nice though saccharine work set in a miscellaneous European city at a miscellaneous late 19th-century/early 20th-century point in time; it is remarkable for the historical research and detail that went into the drawing of it, and its peculiarly detached, peaceful atmosphere. The Bleach film is much more loosely sketched; but it is not as ethereal, nor does it pound the work ethic into the minds of its viewers or pretend that employers consistently reward effort. I went to sleep after 3:30 a.m., at which point it was already snowing, and the tiny flakes in the street lamps resembled motes drifting in a lake.
Then I had to wake up at around 11:30 (which is not so bad, come to think of it) as Gi. had to go out and so I was the doorman by the process of elimination. At around 2 p.m. I set off per U-Bahn to the environs of Ernst-Reuter-Platz, to register for one of the TU language courses. The roads are fairly clear, but the sidewalks are a wilderness, which I didn't much mind though they threaten to become slippery. It turns out that the university building is on the street where I went to my job interview for the Café Einstein in May 2007. I remembered the path reasonably well. The building itself is interesting as far as the interior is concerned — low ceilings, bare cement, scant lighting, and a front(?) entrance that is so awkwardly and uncomfortably arranged that it feels very much like a back entrance. No clocks, either, which would have been helpful as I came early (which was a little embarrassing).
So I read Around the World in Eighty Days in the original. Thus far I've only read it in an abridged English version, which cheerfully chops out Jules Verne's statistics (e.g. that the train between Oakland and Omaha goes ca. 20 miles per hour — wheeeee — counting stops) and descriptions of places. The scenes I'm at are pretty good. First there is the American election scrimmage, wherein the habiliments of Phileas Fogg and Fix are torn to shreds, and the former concludes a terse appointment for a duel. "Yankee!" exclaims Fogg to an apparent ringleader of the freelance pugilists. "Englishman!" retorts the ruffian. "What is your name?". — "Phileas Fogg. And yours?" — "Colonel Stamp W. Proctor." (That is one of the most convincing American names in the whole book, by the way. I have no idea what Verne was thinking when he came up with "Mandiboy.") And then they resolve that they shall meet again. Here the author smugly remarks that, though the English may abhor duelling in their own country, they are willing enough to duel abroad on Points of Honour. At which point I sighed, metaphorically speaking. Secondly, there is the scene where Passepartout attends a lecture on the history of the Mormons, delivered by a member of that faith who little heeds the rapid diminution of his audience. The orator winds up by impressively asking his remaining auditor to join the good fight. "No!" Passepartout boldly answers, as he leaves the car likewise.
At last I joined a line of students who were waiting in front of the language course office. One or two wanted to take German, and three of us wanted to take Chinese. As I didn't have to do a language proficiency test, given the unmitigated nature of my ignorance, it went quickly for me. A Chinese student explained what the courses were like and signed me up for a beginner's course that will last four weeks; the textbook and a CD will be provided at a cost of 10 Euros in the first class. Then I went into the adjoining room to pay with my debit card. As I am neither a student nor officially unemployed, and the course amounts to 60 hours (instead of 40 hours; I only saw this after signing up, but decided to go with it as the extra time should be extra helpful), the fee was 153 Euros. The French student who accepted the payment probably saw something of the shock which this sum prompted; his air was most sympathetic. But I do have considerable money, so the sympathy was nice but not necessary.
After that was over I went out of the building very pleased at having conceived and executed a whim that is not only pointful but also practicable. Outside it was still poetically snowing, the air was fresh, and I was in the mood to exert myself once more (and to pinch pennies), so I walked home along the Straße des 17. Juni and then southeast through Nollendorfplatz. It helped that the Siegessäule was already visible, looking closer than it is. I plodded along the university buildings, bemused and amused at the Brutalist buildings that were clad along one side in clunky tiered stone façades that looked like turn-of-the-century takes on neoclassicism. At the Ernst-Reuter-Haus I was much impressed, firstly by the immense arch (a species of glorified billboard for L'Oréal from which smiles the tremendously magnified visage of Eva Longoria) that spans the thoroughfare in honour of the Berlinale, secondly by the neobaroque colonnades of the Charlottenburg Gate (whose existence was previously unknown by me), where icicles dripped at the feet of a grandiose black statue of Friedrich I, and thirdly by the wide and stately though otherwise unremarkable Haus itself.
The Tiergarten was fairly deserted, as was the Siegessäule. The ribbed tracks of bicycles were frequent on the sidewalk, whereas the footsteps of pedestrians were partly filled in again. The evergreen shrubs were bowed down with burdens of snow that looked like weighty paws. Everywhere icicles were hanging from the cars. In the Kleistpark, the falling snow contrasting against the shadowy hemlocks reminded me again of Narnia. So the walk was very picturesque.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Return to the Hospital, and Other Ramblings
J. and I peregrinated back to the hospital today, went almost to the First Aid station, then took the elevator to the first floor above ground level, to the surgical polyclinic. (Well, the German is "Chirurgische Poliklinik.") It turns out that we did not have to display J.'s health insurance card or anything today; the lady at the polyclinic check-in pointed us into the corridor and told us to go directly to the Durchgangsarzt, who is responsible for workplace accidents (school accidents run under the same rubric). On the door of that office, a sign (apparently erroneously) pointed us to the cast room. A doctor looked at the injury report we brought along, then asked us to wait and said that somebody would come to fetch us. As it turns out, we were forgotten.
So we sat in the hallway, on the perforated, folding metal chairs, as J. talked about school and looked at the photos of film or theatre productions in his copy of A Tale of Two Cities (including a delightfully hammy photo of Lucie Manette fainting), etc., and both of us stared at the paintings on the opposite walls. In the hallway, the wall is incidentally of cream-coloured stucco, and brown, rubbery strips run along it presumably so that stretchers won't scrape it. The painting to the left looked to me like a Cézanne rendering of a Provençal scene, where wavy red-roofed houses stand and the dark green leaves of trees and shrubs swirl on a hilltop overlooking the sea. The painting on the right is the scene of a presumably Dutch river in the midst of winter in what is presumably the 15th century. As grey clouds lie in banks in the sky, filtering beams of sunlight in the distance, and speckled with flights of birds, a brown city with very lazily executed roofs and peaks stretches on the distant bank of the watercourse. The river is principally frozen, though detached floes appear close to the city, and ships in brown and dabs of white paint for sails are suspended in it, as the townsmen skate on it near and far. These figures are posed and clothed as if in a Brueghel painting, and one of them is in the act of falling (very fitting for paintings in a hospital). In the lower left-hand corner a black-clad lady, who looks like she's wearing a nun's habit with a squat, peaked witch's hat on top, promenades with a gentleman who sports a resplendent, pointy Van Dyke beard and a modest quasi-Elizabethan ruff. Other figures gather around a fire, which unleashes a plume of smoke and then a dark blob that might conceal a terrible error on the part of the painter, or depict darker smoke or, most likely, delineate the gloomy earthy bank of the river. There are bare, jaunty trees that are fairly anthropomorphic, the branches of the leftmost one peculiarly webby, and a dusting of snow over the whole. Altogether it's reminiscent of Brueghel's "Hunters in the Snow," and quite friendly, but in my view a little carelessly executed.
At length a young nurse asked us if we were going into the cast room, and I replied, half-jokingly, "Hopefully." Then she inquired after us among the other doctors and nurses, and we were beckoned in. A doctor promptly looked at J.'s X-rays, and a kind older nurse, a seasoned teacher type, bade us welcome (asking me if I was J.'s mother, which greatly amused me, especially as most people who ask me something in an insecure tone are asking if I'm still in school, which makes me think that I look really young) and then cut the outer bandage off the cast and began prying it open. The younger nurse stood by, and then washed J.'s arm, which looked soft and pudgy and pale (I mean that in the nicest possible way (c: ), and applied a cream to it. Then the older nurse put a little tube of gauze over J.'s thumb, and a longer and broader tube along his lower arm, and then she began wrapping thick, cottony gauze, followed by a thin strip of bandage that either absorbs or prevents perspiration, around the arm. Having asked J. which colour he preferred (purple, dark blue, red, or light blue), and rolled back the exposed edges of the tube gauze to form a nice little frame over the gauze layers, she wrapped a strip of wettened, light blue fibreglass around his arm. The bandages always started at the wrist and ended at the elbow.
Then we went to the check-in of the X-ray rooms, which were not far off, lingered uncertainly, and saw nurses in the rooms at the back of the office, one of whom at last emerged. J. handed her a form from the polyclinic; she pointed us to the waiting room, where one other person was waiting on a stretcher (which made me think that, annoying as waiting sitting on a chair might be, waiting lying on a bed, where your range of motion and of sight are inhibited, is far worse). Then she motioned J. into the X-ray room, and it went quite quickly. She handed us the X-rays right afterward.
Finally we returned to the plaster room, where a doctor (and we) looked at the X-ray photos of 2.5 weeks ago and of today, and professed himself satisfied. The fracture across the ulna is clearly knitting up, though the bump on the radius is even more visible; though from a side view the bones are still clearly offset at an angle, this angle appears slighter, and the doctor (having evaluated the X-rays in pleasing detail) told us that it would grow straight. Then we were given a writ to reappear on a given date, and told not to go to a regular doctor but to a "niedergelassener Durchgangsarzt." I had no idea what "niedergelassen" means in this context, and asked, and received no very enlightening reply from a slightly stunned nurse. Possibly this is a very stupid question, but I console myself with the thought that, given my lack of exposure to medical institutions, my ignorance on that point is coincidence rather than idiocy.
Then we rode the bus back up the Schloßstraße, which runs through buildings that appear to have been built predominantly in the 1960s, and is a parade of dated modern ideas. The red brick Rathaus (= City Hall) Steglitz, with amusingly rare Moorish bands around the windows, is a staunch 19th-century-ish bastion of tradition where the glossy consumerism reaches its apex. (The Schloßstraße is a shopping street.) There as well as here, snow lies on the pavements, where it has not vanished due to salt or dark sand or been trodden into distasteful pale brown ice. It lines the tree branches, too, wherefrom every now and then a tufted speck of snow drifts in the wind like thistledown. Icicles, as long as a hand is wide, hang from signs and the undersides of cars. It is quite cold.
At any rate, today's excursion is the most productive thing I've done in ages. Otherwise it's been "chick flicks" on YouTube, 19th-century novels on Project Gutenberg, Gawker and Jezebel (which are sometimes productive to read, but more amusing than productive at present), television (there was a nice documentary on the Galápagos Islands today, à propos of the birthday of you-know-whom), and staring at Word documents that are supposed to become stories. Well, I did play the piano and sing, too, and read about early Chinese and Indian music. But I am contemplating taking language courses at the Technische Uni, following the eminent example of T. One needn't be registered at the TU to take them. In general I have sworn not to go to university, but to learn on my own, for reasons which are too elaborate and possibly boring to elucidate here; but for languages, where hearing and speaking are so important, an exception must be made. My whim is to learn Chinese because, to put it baldly, the written characters look pretty. And I'm interested in China, though in a tentative way that is not enough to make me eager to read much about it.
Besides, I intend to start reading Japanese manga and watching animé and Korean dramas. So far the only Korean drama I've seen is the Princess Hours, or Goong, which tells the tale of a princess who is born in the middle class, marries the prince in an arranged wedding, and then must come to terms with her new life. I watched it in almost one sitting, though it impaired my sanity by the end. It became very repetitive before the dénouement; the princess kept on talking with the prince's cousin on the balcony, the prince kept on stalking out jealously to rudely interrupt their conversation, and the threat of fisticuffs was ever imminent, whilst I tired of the matter and fast-forwarded the video. Anyway, I'd avoided manga, etc., so that I don't become addicted to it as well as to nineteenth-century online novels and YouTube films. But, having surfeited on the latter, finding the idea of reading The Crooked Path for the 10th time excessive and not having the least intention of revisiting Twilight (where much fast-forwarding took place), there is room now for a new expedient for frittering away my time. And I do want to learn more Japanese. (My plan to move to New York is indefinitely postponed due to the financial crisis, and my plan to volunteer at an archaeological dig in Scotland over the summer is uncertain, though the relevant website is on my bookmarks list.)
In other news, Uncle Pu visited today, as he had another violin practice this evening, and everyone except J. and me (and Papa, who was still at work) consumed chocolate and, presumably, the traditional brew of ovaltine. In international news, I watched a portion of Barack Obama's speech (live from Denver, Colorado) on the recently approved economic stimulus bill, and am very much interested to see how the New Deal-type building programmes, which he (if I remember correctly) said were expected to create 400,000 jobs, will fare. [Catty remark deleted.]
So we sat in the hallway, on the perforated, folding metal chairs, as J. talked about school and looked at the photos of film or theatre productions in his copy of A Tale of Two Cities (including a delightfully hammy photo of Lucie Manette fainting), etc., and both of us stared at the paintings on the opposite walls. In the hallway, the wall is incidentally of cream-coloured stucco, and brown, rubbery strips run along it presumably so that stretchers won't scrape it. The painting to the left looked to me like a Cézanne rendering of a Provençal scene, where wavy red-roofed houses stand and the dark green leaves of trees and shrubs swirl on a hilltop overlooking the sea. The painting on the right is the scene of a presumably Dutch river in the midst of winter in what is presumably the 15th century. As grey clouds lie in banks in the sky, filtering beams of sunlight in the distance, and speckled with flights of birds, a brown city with very lazily executed roofs and peaks stretches on the distant bank of the watercourse. The river is principally frozen, though detached floes appear close to the city, and ships in brown and dabs of white paint for sails are suspended in it, as the townsmen skate on it near and far. These figures are posed and clothed as if in a Brueghel painting, and one of them is in the act of falling (very fitting for paintings in a hospital). In the lower left-hand corner a black-clad lady, who looks like she's wearing a nun's habit with a squat, peaked witch's hat on top, promenades with a gentleman who sports a resplendent, pointy Van Dyke beard and a modest quasi-Elizabethan ruff. Other figures gather around a fire, which unleashes a plume of smoke and then a dark blob that might conceal a terrible error on the part of the painter, or depict darker smoke or, most likely, delineate the gloomy earthy bank of the river. There are bare, jaunty trees that are fairly anthropomorphic, the branches of the leftmost one peculiarly webby, and a dusting of snow over the whole. Altogether it's reminiscent of Brueghel's "Hunters in the Snow," and quite friendly, but in my view a little carelessly executed.
At length a young nurse asked us if we were going into the cast room, and I replied, half-jokingly, "Hopefully." Then she inquired after us among the other doctors and nurses, and we were beckoned in. A doctor promptly looked at J.'s X-rays, and a kind older nurse, a seasoned teacher type, bade us welcome (asking me if I was J.'s mother, which greatly amused me, especially as most people who ask me something in an insecure tone are asking if I'm still in school, which makes me think that I look really young) and then cut the outer bandage off the cast and began prying it open. The younger nurse stood by, and then washed J.'s arm, which looked soft and pudgy and pale (I mean that in the nicest possible way (c: ), and applied a cream to it. Then the older nurse put a little tube of gauze over J.'s thumb, and a longer and broader tube along his lower arm, and then she began wrapping thick, cottony gauze, followed by a thin strip of bandage that either absorbs or prevents perspiration, around the arm. Having asked J. which colour he preferred (purple, dark blue, red, or light blue), and rolled back the exposed edges of the tube gauze to form a nice little frame over the gauze layers, she wrapped a strip of wettened, light blue fibreglass around his arm. The bandages always started at the wrist and ended at the elbow.
Then we went to the check-in of the X-ray rooms, which were not far off, lingered uncertainly, and saw nurses in the rooms at the back of the office, one of whom at last emerged. J. handed her a form from the polyclinic; she pointed us to the waiting room, where one other person was waiting on a stretcher (which made me think that, annoying as waiting sitting on a chair might be, waiting lying on a bed, where your range of motion and of sight are inhibited, is far worse). Then she motioned J. into the X-ray room, and it went quite quickly. She handed us the X-rays right afterward.
Finally we returned to the plaster room, where a doctor (and we) looked at the X-ray photos of 2.5 weeks ago and of today, and professed himself satisfied. The fracture across the ulna is clearly knitting up, though the bump on the radius is even more visible; though from a side view the bones are still clearly offset at an angle, this angle appears slighter, and the doctor (having evaluated the X-rays in pleasing detail) told us that it would grow straight. Then we were given a writ to reappear on a given date, and told not to go to a regular doctor but to a "niedergelassener Durchgangsarzt." I had no idea what "niedergelassen" means in this context, and asked, and received no very enlightening reply from a slightly stunned nurse. Possibly this is a very stupid question, but I console myself with the thought that, given my lack of exposure to medical institutions, my ignorance on that point is coincidence rather than idiocy.
Then we rode the bus back up the Schloßstraße, which runs through buildings that appear to have been built predominantly in the 1960s, and is a parade of dated modern ideas. The red brick Rathaus (= City Hall) Steglitz, with amusingly rare Moorish bands around the windows, is a staunch 19th-century-ish bastion of tradition where the glossy consumerism reaches its apex. (The Schloßstraße is a shopping street.) There as well as here, snow lies on the pavements, where it has not vanished due to salt or dark sand or been trodden into distasteful pale brown ice. It lines the tree branches, too, wherefrom every now and then a tufted speck of snow drifts in the wind like thistledown. Icicles, as long as a hand is wide, hang from signs and the undersides of cars. It is quite cold.
At any rate, today's excursion is the most productive thing I've done in ages. Otherwise it's been "chick flicks" on YouTube, 19th-century novels on Project Gutenberg, Gawker and Jezebel (which are sometimes productive to read, but more amusing than productive at present), television (there was a nice documentary on the Galápagos Islands today, à propos of the birthday of you-know-whom), and staring at Word documents that are supposed to become stories. Well, I did play the piano and sing, too, and read about early Chinese and Indian music. But I am contemplating taking language courses at the Technische Uni, following the eminent example of T. One needn't be registered at the TU to take them. In general I have sworn not to go to university, but to learn on my own, for reasons which are too elaborate and possibly boring to elucidate here; but for languages, where hearing and speaking are so important, an exception must be made. My whim is to learn Chinese because, to put it baldly, the written characters look pretty. And I'm interested in China, though in a tentative way that is not enough to make me eager to read much about it.
Besides, I intend to start reading Japanese manga and watching animé and Korean dramas. So far the only Korean drama I've seen is the Princess Hours, or Goong, which tells the tale of a princess who is born in the middle class, marries the prince in an arranged wedding, and then must come to terms with her new life. I watched it in almost one sitting, though it impaired my sanity by the end. It became very repetitive before the dénouement; the princess kept on talking with the prince's cousin on the balcony, the prince kept on stalking out jealously to rudely interrupt their conversation, and the threat of fisticuffs was ever imminent, whilst I tired of the matter and fast-forwarded the video. Anyway, I'd avoided manga, etc., so that I don't become addicted to it as well as to nineteenth-century online novels and YouTube films. But, having surfeited on the latter, finding the idea of reading The Crooked Path for the 10th time excessive and not having the least intention of revisiting Twilight (where much fast-forwarding took place), there is room now for a new expedient for frittering away my time. And I do want to learn more Japanese. (My plan to move to New York is indefinitely postponed due to the financial crisis, and my plan to volunteer at an archaeological dig in Scotland over the summer is uncertain, though the relevant website is on my bookmarks list.)
In other news, Uncle Pu visited today, as he had another violin practice this evening, and everyone except J. and me (and Papa, who was still at work) consumed chocolate and, presumably, the traditional brew of ovaltine. In international news, I watched a portion of Barack Obama's speech (live from Denver, Colorado) on the recently approved economic stimulus bill, and am very much interested to see how the New Deal-type building programmes, which he (if I remember correctly) said were expected to create 400,000 jobs, will fare. [Catty remark deleted.]
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Sic Transit Finance-ia Mundi
Today I watched a vast quantity of television. At times this activity leaves me feeling as intelligent as a bunny rabbit looks as it chews grass and stares straight ahead of it in a creepily vacant way, and sluggish, but today it entertained me no end. Early on there was the Super G ski run at the world championships in the Val d'Isère. It is a very steep course, marked out in blue lines and red or blue banners on springy posts, snaking down the mountainside into a square pen surrounded by a lively crowd, at the end. After a while I could sort of see where the excellent skiers differed from the middling ones; they had a secure feeling for distances, shifted their body weight well, kept their leg muscles good and tense so that their skis wouldn't glide apart and out of control, and went at risky speeds and trajectories so that they would reach the bottom faster. Often they would glide over the blue line, and I spent much of the time wondering how the penalties for that are calculated. Three or more of the skiers wiped out, and two of them slid spectacularly and alarmingly into the double perimeter of orange fence to the left and right of the course. At one point the descent was so sharp that the angle seemed to be almost literally 90 degrees.
In my online book reading, I've reached a tome on household science, which even inspired me to tidy my desk a trifle. At the same time I realized that the pile of socks that are yet to be mended, and which is distributed in subsidiary piles about my room, is huge, and that it is best to begin reducing it again. So I seized a pair of lilac socks and darned it, whilst watching an interview with our former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, primarily on the world financial crisis and how to deal with it. The interviewer industriously squelched any glimmer of humour, which is ordinarily one of the main reasons to watch a Schmidt interview, but at least the conversation was substantial. It was interesting how gloomy the interview was. Schmidt, puffing away at cigarettes as per usual but not gazing with melancholy eyes through the smoke as he sometimes does, was not inclined to lament or forecast doom, but nonetheless took the financial crisis very seriously.
His interlocutor, in the meantime, was suggesting scenarios of unemployment-related rises in support for radical political parties, recurrences of the 1920s, and half-a-dozen other cheerful and alarmist things. Another peccadillo of said interlocutor was to insist on discoursing directly of the German situation, whereas I found it more interesting when Schmidt pointed out that countries like Brazil and the members of OPEC should also have a greater say in international economics, and (indirectly) that we shouldn't bewail our own lot whilst completely ignoring the plight of others. It did irritate me a little that the Greed of Managers came up again. I doubt that it is fair to cast an odium on all managers, and am generally of the opinion that he who is without sin (e.g. irresponsible credit card debt, disproportionate wealth, or cupidity) should throw the first stone. Often the louder people moralize the more they are compensating for a glaring shortcoming in themselves. (Which I never do. Cough, cough.) Besides, I dislike the superiority that those who have not even been in positions of temptation assume over those who have. Involuntary chance is not voluntary virtue, people.
Anyway, I also watched The O.C. and Gilmore Girls. Both of these were "cool" when I was in school. We did watch the latter from time to time but I was ashamed of watching it and found the romantic plots entirely lacking in credibility. So it was fun to watch them now. The O.C. is strikingly void of reality, or so it seems. It is possibly still a good window on middle-class white California, by portraying what it aspires to be and the shortcomings thereof. At times the script is clever; the acting is competent and the characters not unsympathetic. At first I found myself viscerally resenting how well-to-do everyone is and how they don't appear to work much for it (my internal commentary ran something like "stupid people, having enough money to own a house and buy clothing and have matching furniture," etc., etc.) but I've overcome it. (Of course I don't work myself, anyway, but two years of scrimping have given me a better, if irrationally bitter, sense of what it is to be lower-middle-class.) As for the Gilmore Girls, the later episodes are, in my opinion, a snooze, but the earlier ones are reasonably funny. The scenes where Lorelai Gilmore very, very awkwardly reestablishes her relationship to her WASP-y parents ring true, I think, as does the dynamic between her and her daughter, and I like the satirical but not overly antagonistic depiction of the lifestyle of the rich and stodgy.
In the evening, after I had cooked lunch (wild mushroom soup out of a package, and spaetzle with fried onion and apple) and watched more television, Papa and T. came home from the university, bearing with them a bottle of gin and bars upon bars of chocolate. The gin remains, to my knowledge, unopened, to be enjoyed discriminatingly later, but the chocolate is mostly opened and we've enjoyed it undiscriminatingly. Besides chocolate with a peppermint filling, which I love though it is a glaringly unsubtle and therefore presumably plebeian preference, there were chocolate bars with exotic fillings, e.g. lime, pecan and mascarpone, cranberry, and cognac. Unfortunately the alcohol had predominantly crystallized into bulbous stalagmites/stalactites of sugar, which did not prevent one or two of us from spilling the goopy remainder, but altogether it was most delectable.
In my online book reading, I've reached a tome on household science, which even inspired me to tidy my desk a trifle. At the same time I realized that the pile of socks that are yet to be mended, and which is distributed in subsidiary piles about my room, is huge, and that it is best to begin reducing it again. So I seized a pair of lilac socks and darned it, whilst watching an interview with our former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, primarily on the world financial crisis and how to deal with it. The interviewer industriously squelched any glimmer of humour, which is ordinarily one of the main reasons to watch a Schmidt interview, but at least the conversation was substantial. It was interesting how gloomy the interview was. Schmidt, puffing away at cigarettes as per usual but not gazing with melancholy eyes through the smoke as he sometimes does, was not inclined to lament or forecast doom, but nonetheless took the financial crisis very seriously.
His interlocutor, in the meantime, was suggesting scenarios of unemployment-related rises in support for radical political parties, recurrences of the 1920s, and half-a-dozen other cheerful and alarmist things. Another peccadillo of said interlocutor was to insist on discoursing directly of the German situation, whereas I found it more interesting when Schmidt pointed out that countries like Brazil and the members of OPEC should also have a greater say in international economics, and (indirectly) that we shouldn't bewail our own lot whilst completely ignoring the plight of others. It did irritate me a little that the Greed of Managers came up again. I doubt that it is fair to cast an odium on all managers, and am generally of the opinion that he who is without sin (e.g. irresponsible credit card debt, disproportionate wealth, or cupidity) should throw the first stone. Often the louder people moralize the more they are compensating for a glaring shortcoming in themselves. (Which I never do. Cough, cough.) Besides, I dislike the superiority that those who have not even been in positions of temptation assume over those who have. Involuntary chance is not voluntary virtue, people.
Anyway, I also watched The O.C. and Gilmore Girls. Both of these were "cool" when I was in school. We did watch the latter from time to time but I was ashamed of watching it and found the romantic plots entirely lacking in credibility. So it was fun to watch them now. The O.C. is strikingly void of reality, or so it seems. It is possibly still a good window on middle-class white California, by portraying what it aspires to be and the shortcomings thereof. At times the script is clever; the acting is competent and the characters not unsympathetic. At first I found myself viscerally resenting how well-to-do everyone is and how they don't appear to work much for it (my internal commentary ran something like "stupid people, having enough money to own a house and buy clothing and have matching furniture," etc., etc.) but I've overcome it. (Of course I don't work myself, anyway, but two years of scrimping have given me a better, if irrationally bitter, sense of what it is to be lower-middle-class.) As for the Gilmore Girls, the later episodes are, in my opinion, a snooze, but the earlier ones are reasonably funny. The scenes where Lorelai Gilmore very, very awkwardly reestablishes her relationship to her WASP-y parents ring true, I think, as does the dynamic between her and her daughter, and I like the satirical but not overly antagonistic depiction of the lifestyle of the rich and stodgy.
In the evening, after I had cooked lunch (wild mushroom soup out of a package, and spaetzle with fried onion and apple) and watched more television, Papa and T. came home from the university, bearing with them a bottle of gin and bars upon bars of chocolate. The gin remains, to my knowledge, unopened, to be enjoyed discriminatingly later, but the chocolate is mostly opened and we've enjoyed it undiscriminatingly. Besides chocolate with a peppermint filling, which I love though it is a glaringly unsubtle and therefore presumably plebeian preference, there were chocolate bars with exotic fillings, e.g. lime, pecan and mascarpone, cranberry, and cognac. Unfortunately the alcohol had predominantly crystallized into bulbous stalagmites/stalactites of sugar, which did not prevent one or two of us from spilling the goopy remainder, but altogether it was most delectable.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
A Bicentenary, etc.
For the past days I've felt unsettled and out of sorts. The excursions to the hospital and the cocktail bar figuratively speaking tore apart the nice warm nest, i.e. an atmosphere of comfort, which I had built for myself since the journey to New York. There are isolated places outside of the apartment where I feel at home, like the Gemäldegalerie or Brandenburger Tor or Kleistpark. (Grocery stores are fine, too.) But firstly I don't like public transport except if it is highly clean and spacious and well-ventilated, or if it is an adventure (a real adventure, not traumatizing "life experience"). Secondly I don't like streets, apart from their evident functionality, except if the buildings along them are consistent in architectural style or aesthetics or both, and if the shabby ones are picturesquely antique. So, when going out, I often feel as uncomfortable psychologically as one would feel physically standing outside on a cold and rainy day, and I often return home feeling alienated and not like myself. It requires days of painstaking laziness to reestablish my old cheerful self. All of which is not precisely healthy, but also not the predominant reason why I tend to stay at home (the reasons are many, and of varying degrees of complexity; one of the least complicated is that I wish to save bus fare).
Another reason for the unsettledness is that I am foraging for fresh piano repertoire, and haven't quite become friends with the pieces yet. It is fun, however, to roam among my great-aunt's scores. There are surprises in the way of the classical canon, and old scores in various states of disintegration with elegant decorations on the title page and often the stamp of the Berlin music store Hans Riedel. But there are also very zeitgeisty editions of 20th-century popular music and new compositions, as well as lesson-books. I like to feel that my great-aunt is passing on a portion of her musical knowledge to me through them, as well as through the musicological books that are piled up in T.'s and my room, waiting for me to read them.
At any rate, I found Scarlatti's sonatas and Schubert's impromptus and moments musicaux. All of these are a little hard to play well. It may be unfair, but the Schubert pieces strike me as perilously near to instantaneous clichés, and the Scarlatti pieces are so simple as the notes go that it is hard to bring forth any depth. On the other hand, Papa often played the impromptus D 935, No.2 (A flat major) and 3 (B flat major), and I like those very much. Besides, in the intermission of the last New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim played the No.2, in a thoughtful and unadorned but impressive way that engraved the piece in the mind. So, though I don't like playing pieces that Papa or the others play for fear that they'll stop playing them, I'll learn it. But, as far as I remember, Barenboim left out the trio, and when I tried the first bars of it yesterday or the day before it did not sound so great. Altogether, though this may be wildly inaccurate, I think of Schubert as a genial and modest fellow, who was in an elevated way quite simple (not as in stupid, but as in straightforward and healthy-minded), and I revere his sincerity and depth of feeling; but at times I do wish his compositions had more of the temperamental originality of Beethoven's.
Years ago I practiced the moment musical D 780, No. 3 (f minor), but made up my mind that every time I did so I'd have to memorize more of the score, including the intricate fingering. Perhaps needless to say, I stopped practicing it soon, though the first ten bars or so have stayed memorized. Now I have dropped the stern resolve and resumed playing the piece.
As for Scarlatti, we once listened to Vladimir Horowitz's recordings of a few of the sonatas often, so theoretically I know that there is much to be found in them. I interpret them as being scenes of Italian daily life, though not in a particularly literal way, and used to picture cloisters or monasteries, quiet and echoing, in the sunny Italian countryside when I listened to the CD. Normally Horowitz is not precisely my cup of tea, as I find his music lacking in emotional breadth. But I imagine that it was through his finely-tuned mind that he picked up on the nuances and quirks of Scarlatti as perfectly as an ant (and I really don't mean this comparison to be pejorative) picks up on the minute details of its environment through the quivering sensitivity of its antennae. (And no, I did not think out this conceit and its phrasing ahead of time, and embed it in this post to show off. (c: )
Anyway, today is the 200th birthday of Our Ancestor, Felix Mendelssohn. [N.B.: Not a direct ancestor. He is the cousin or brother of somebody.] Even if he were not Our Ancestor, I'd still think the birthday worth noting, even though my knowledge of his oeuvre is pretty much limited to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," the Wedding March (which I don't like that much), the Violin Concerto in e minor, my favourite Trio in d minor, and Songs Without Words. For all the risk of kitsch in them, it does say something that I've practiced the songs without words, day after day after day after day, without their growing stale. It's hard to pinpoint, but they have substance. Where his biography is concerned, I like that he was so fond of his sister Fanny, though the tale of her composing career / lack thereof is not especially admirable, and that he was quite content to go as plain Mendelssohn and only took up the name Bartholdy out of respect for his father. At any rate, to return to my great-aunt, when she played duets with Papa on Saturdays, they would often play the song without words, Op. 109; whether her grumbling about its sentimentality and her customary statement that genealogy obliges were wholly serious it was difficult to tell. I like it. (c: Here it is as played by Jacqueline du Pré, accompanied by her mother:
Another reason for the unsettledness is that I am foraging for fresh piano repertoire, and haven't quite become friends with the pieces yet. It is fun, however, to roam among my great-aunt's scores. There are surprises in the way of the classical canon, and old scores in various states of disintegration with elegant decorations on the title page and often the stamp of the Berlin music store Hans Riedel. But there are also very zeitgeisty editions of 20th-century popular music and new compositions, as well as lesson-books. I like to feel that my great-aunt is passing on a portion of her musical knowledge to me through them, as well as through the musicological books that are piled up in T.'s and my room, waiting for me to read them.
At any rate, I found Scarlatti's sonatas and Schubert's impromptus and moments musicaux. All of these are a little hard to play well. It may be unfair, but the Schubert pieces strike me as perilously near to instantaneous clichés, and the Scarlatti pieces are so simple as the notes go that it is hard to bring forth any depth. On the other hand, Papa often played the impromptus D 935, No.2 (A flat major) and 3 (B flat major), and I like those very much. Besides, in the intermission of the last New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim played the No.2, in a thoughtful and unadorned but impressive way that engraved the piece in the mind. So, though I don't like playing pieces that Papa or the others play for fear that they'll stop playing them, I'll learn it. But, as far as I remember, Barenboim left out the trio, and when I tried the first bars of it yesterday or the day before it did not sound so great. Altogether, though this may be wildly inaccurate, I think of Schubert as a genial and modest fellow, who was in an elevated way quite simple (not as in stupid, but as in straightforward and healthy-minded), and I revere his sincerity and depth of feeling; but at times I do wish his compositions had more of the temperamental originality of Beethoven's.
Years ago I practiced the moment musical D 780, No. 3 (f minor), but made up my mind that every time I did so I'd have to memorize more of the score, including the intricate fingering. Perhaps needless to say, I stopped practicing it soon, though the first ten bars or so have stayed memorized. Now I have dropped the stern resolve and resumed playing the piece.
As for Scarlatti, we once listened to Vladimir Horowitz's recordings of a few of the sonatas often, so theoretically I know that there is much to be found in them. I interpret them as being scenes of Italian daily life, though not in a particularly literal way, and used to picture cloisters or monasteries, quiet and echoing, in the sunny Italian countryside when I listened to the CD. Normally Horowitz is not precisely my cup of tea, as I find his music lacking in emotional breadth. But I imagine that it was through his finely-tuned mind that he picked up on the nuances and quirks of Scarlatti as perfectly as an ant (and I really don't mean this comparison to be pejorative) picks up on the minute details of its environment through the quivering sensitivity of its antennae. (And no, I did not think out this conceit and its phrasing ahead of time, and embed it in this post to show off. (c: )
Anyway, today is the 200th birthday of Our Ancestor, Felix Mendelssohn. [N.B.: Not a direct ancestor. He is the cousin or brother of somebody.] Even if he were not Our Ancestor, I'd still think the birthday worth noting, even though my knowledge of his oeuvre is pretty much limited to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," the Wedding March (which I don't like that much), the Violin Concerto in e minor, my favourite Trio in d minor, and Songs Without Words. For all the risk of kitsch in them, it does say something that I've practiced the songs without words, day after day after day after day, without their growing stale. It's hard to pinpoint, but they have substance. Where his biography is concerned, I like that he was so fond of his sister Fanny, though the tale of her composing career / lack thereof is not especially admirable, and that he was quite content to go as plain Mendelssohn and only took up the name Bartholdy out of respect for his father. At any rate, to return to my great-aunt, when she played duets with Papa on Saturdays, they would often play the song without words, Op. 109; whether her grumbling about its sentimentality and her customary statement that genealogy obliges were wholly serious it was difficult to tell. I like it. (c: Here it is as played by Jacqueline du Pré, accompanied by her mother:
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