Of Pounds and Pence

It's been a warm and sunny day. In the evening J. and I went for a promenade in the park, and the daffodils and blue squills are out in their full glory. It's indescribable, but the sight of a perfect starry daffodil standing quietly against a canvas of scattered pale brown leaves is truly beautiful. I also like the dusky shade of the squills. The snowdrops have largely wilted away, and there aren't any crocuses in flower in the park as far as I could see.

Earlier I had a long session at the bank, in which I put most of my money onto a "deposit account" (Depotkonto), which will pay me interest, and signed up for a pension plan (very convenient for a person who doesn't have job-related benefits), which will swallow 200 Euros per month but evolve into a fairly decent sum (400,000+ Euros) by 2052. Given that my new health insurance plan will drain an additional 140 Euros or so from my bank account per month, it will be necessary to find work. This necessity doesn't bother me, because I'm sure to find some since there is a very concrete motivation for it.

I could copy-edit websites, translate German into English, translate English into French if the employer is not too picky about errors, proofread essays in English, tutor in English, work as a magazine or newspaper intern (fact-checking, etc.), clean apartments, etc. Yesterday I investigated other possibilities on the internet, like working at a museum shop or as an usher in a concert hall, but these positions are evidently as inaccessible to the unwashed masses as knighthoods in King Arthur's court (not that I mind much). Something I'd like to do but am not qualified for is gardening, but gardening jobs often require a driver's license and experience driving tractors, etc. Data entry would most likely be too mind-numbing. As for the work that I'd like to do eventually, it could be, for instance, editing a magazine. I would like to teach music, too, but if anything only on a private basis, as that field is evidently saturated and the idea of years of pedagogical training saps all the fun out of it. As I've mentioned before, freelance writing is a doubtful prospect because I'm not ready to write the truly good stories yet.

Anyway, I've applied for a 30 hr/week housekeeping job, and doubt I'll get it, but it would be fun if I did (especially as there is a minimal chance of this one being seedy). This may sound weird, but one day when I was very bored at the hostel in New York, I took a roll of toilet paper that had been sitting on the mantelpiece, filled some water into the clean-looking and emptied trash pail, and then cleaned the marble(!) fireplace. It was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done. Unfortunately it had little effect; the marble had presumably been treated with an acidic cleaning fluid, which clouded and disguised it so thoroughly that I had thought at first it was grimy whitewashed wood. The day after that, perhaps, the true cleaning lady showed up to vacuum the carpets and sanitize the bathrooms and so on, and the thoroughness and rapidity of her system was immensely impressive. Long story short, I like picturesque disorder a great deal, but abhor unpicturesque grubbiness and unhygienic conditions, and do therefore have natural housekeeperly impulses.

As far as the piano goes, I'm still working on the Schubert impromptus. But I wish that there were challenging but musical pieces that I'd like enough to learn thoroughly, and that would improve my technique, for instance. I find that pieces tend to train me better than finger exercises or scales do; for instance, I became comfortable with locating very high and very low notes, and jumping between them, after being immersed in Prokofiev's Musiques d'enfants for a couple of months. The Rachmaninoff g-minor prelude sort of counts, but it's hard to keep it from resembling the soundtrack of a Soviet propaganda video, as it has a militaristic or industrial striding-toward-the-exalted-future vibe. I've attempted the fifth Chopin étude, but don't adore it. Mendelssohn's Rondo capriccioso didn't overwhelm me either, nor the remainder of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.2. The thing is that I don't like music that has myriads of tiny worthless notes in it that are the cold sparks of virtuosic fireworks but have no beauty or meaning of their own. (This may also be sour grapes, because I sightread them far too slowly and then the repetitive notes go on and on and on.) And the more difficult music is, the more it has these. But I did play movements of Beethoven's later sonatas (all of the Sonata appassionata) today, and that was good. It is also refreshing to look at Mozart and Haydn sonatas once more; after a constant diet of Romantic pieces and Bach I tend to sound permanently rushed and angry, and the classical pieces require a more gentle and melodious and transparent (i.e. where you can hear every single note) approach.

Besides this, I've been reviewing my Spanish and Mandarin. There is a delightful website (http://a4esl.org) designed for English as a Second Language students, which is full of vocabulary quizzes. Since I know tons of Spanish anyway, or feel as if I did, it does appear worthwhile to polish up my knowledge and perhaps finally reach the point where I can read Don Quixote past the first paragraph. Which round-about-edly reminds me that my transit reading is still Around the World in Eighty Days. It's now the part where Phileas Fogg and the others are crossing the Atlantic in the Henrietta. Altogether I am gradually coming to think that this may be one of the funniest books ever written, which is especially surprising as I don't precisely read Jules Verne for knee-slapping hilarity.

Lastly, and despite the aforementioned hilarity, I have felt like moping a lot lately. I've been immersing myself in music, television, blogs, and online novels for days on end without attaining the usual result of turning into a perfectly cheery and content person, until ca. five minutes ago. But the state of dread I was in before and between the bank appointments explains it. It gave me the old feeling that whenever I have found a happy place, an oasis as it were, some marauding camel from the outside world tramples in and destroys everything. The health insurance is a marauding camel, too. Eating up my savings even though I'm perfectly healthy indeed! Since 2004, at least, I've denied myself countless candies, meals, bus/U-Bahn rides, travels, presents for others, flowers, newspapers, and considerably flattering items of clothing (e.g. a grey dress from a Vancouver consignment store, which I have long felt remorseful about not buying), to make up for not having a job by being prudent. I certainly did not practice this self-control in order to see my scrimpings gobbled up at an exorbitant rate at the behest of the government. It's almost enough to turn me into a Republican sympathizer! (Actually, no.) Anyway, now that this rant is off my mind, I will be reasonable and remember that I am wealthy compared to half the world's population, etc.