A Farewell to My Holiday Humour

This morning I set off for the university fairly cheerfully, but realized as soon as I left the U-Bahn station that this was in fact only a superficial mood, and that in fact I was sort of grumpy and that it would be less gruesome and fake if I 'owned' it.

So birds twittered left and right, orange-billed blackbirds hopped on the ground, squills and pink hyacinths and red tulips and Oregon grape flowers and forsythias burst out from the growing green of the lilacs, snowberry bushes, etc., and I noticed it all and felt mildly happily grouchy throughout.

My Greek class is taking place in a new room this semester; fortunately I found it soon enough, acting upon system, and the numbers of classmates seems to be roughly the same. A new classmate and native of Amsterdam joined the group, and we all negotiated the schedule for the coming semester, in which the others evinced a powerfully strange enthusiasm for a Monday class beginning at 8:30 a.m. But the Tuesday time slot which thus drops away was highly inconvenient for me because my History and Society of the Near East (Islamic Studies) lecture takes place at the same time. We read part of a description of the origins of Easter, which I found quite easy actually, and then said what we did during the holidays. Mine had felt quite lively because I had transposed myself into so many situations and places through my heavy news reading, and because I felt that I had somehow progressed; but when I was searching for things to mention very little had happened after all, but my class didn't seem to mind.

After I was let out, I crossed to the auditorium for the Islamic Studies lecture, and heard the tail end of a charting of the rise of the Ottoman Empire. I was surprisingly sad that I'd missed the lecture, but I presume the material will partly be repeated in the weeks to come.

After two hours not very scintillatingly spent reviewing fewer than two pages of Greek in such a way that it took forever (then recollecting that I'd need my textbook and possibly my dictionary for Latin in the evening, and then going home and back to university without even having the drink of water I'd rather wished for), I arrived late at the Islamic studies seminar. I didn't mind since introductions can be awkward; I was surprised, though, that no one in the class was familiar from my seminar last semester. Altogether, at first glance, everyone seemed a contrast to the grittier classmates, and to the classmates who were actually from the Middle East or India and therefore could enlighten the rest of us about Arabic terms and arab history, Muslim observances, etc. — all of whom altogether had an inspiringly serious and kind of impressive and genuine approach to the subject — in the last semester.

But I like the seminar teacher's style. She seemed generally bright and energetic; and, regarding our topic of the Muslim community in the US, she openly declared, for instance, that we would be examining the Nation of Islam alongside more 'orthodox' Islam; and that we would respect the self-identification of people as Muslims, non-Muslims, or whatever they chose. To give us a context she reeled off figures and studies about the numerical composition of the Muslim community; mentioned Dearborn, Michigan; gave an overview of the American civil rights movement, which is kind of relevant through the Nation of Islam; and altogether relayed all sorts of tidbits which I'm sure the reader would be interested in but which I'm too lazy to list. Altogether it seems that my addiction to Americana and exposure to the news and culture will come in quite handy, but it was already evident today that the reality which underlies these things is something else again.

Then I found a way out of the building, which was slightly difficult since some of the doors had been locked for the night, and proceeded to my Latin class. This class contained far fewer people, and my professor seemed to be really happy about it. We plunged back into our textbook and read Cicero for Dummies, thereby being introduced to the various uses of 'cum' (with, since, while, etc.) and to the active and passive forms of the pluperfect (Plusquamperfekt in German). Amavisse and such. Needless to say I was not thrilled with the joys of grammatical discovery, but I did put up my hand and translate a clause of the semi-Ciceronian text to the professor's satisfaction.

I thought that the text made Cicero sound like a pompous prig, inventing a halcyon past which never existed to vituperate the remaining political establishment, etc., very much like a conservative might in the modern US (I'm no historian, but as far as I've observed the historical record tends to leave out peccadilloes which weren't considered so important or sufficiently decorous, which doesn't mean that human nature itself goes through huge fluctuations) but didn't vent this opinion.

Walking back to the U-Bahn station sometime after 7:45 p.m., admiring the magenta wash of sunset colour at the horizon, I may or may not have inhaled a fruit fly.

The Visit of the Easter Bunny

Two or so days ago, the maternal Bunny declared herself quite satisfied to leave the Easter preparations to a consortium of some or all of her children. So I did the remaining planning — an Easter breakfast and a dinner with roast lamb were already a given — and Mama unbent insofar as she did housecleaning and part of the shopping, and Ge. and J. took care of the rest of the purchases. This night I was up and about anyway, having gone to sleep around 3 p.m. and woken up some eleven hours later, and together with Ge. and J. cleared off and set the table.

In case anyone cares, a glass of yellow tulips stands in the middle of the table, on top of a potato-brown, lacy round cloth; underneath there is a tablecloth of white linen, with turquoise and white placemats around. I put plain white bread-and-butter plates at every place, the cutlery, and our plaid napkins.

Besides I made a yeast dough for buns, which should probably be called brioches since they were sweetish, according to a recipe from our big, eye-candy cake book from Dr. Oetker. The dough rose beside the oven (covered in clingwrap which traps condensation and prevents the surface of the dough ball from drying out), and I gave it a second kneading eventually, after which it reassured me by rising far more.

I boiled one batch of three white eggs, which T. and I decorated with aquarell pencils, and then one batch of five or six brown and white eggs with onion skin to dye them a pale or darker brown. By coincidence I had recently read (here) that the 'proper' way to boil an egg so that it is soft and devoid of a olive-green ring around the yolk, is to bring it to a boil in plenty of water with the usual salt (without a lid, but I kept on the lid most of the time because the environmental benefits of heat-saving seemed more important), and then to turn off the heat and leave the egg in the water for fifteen minutes with the lid closed. So I did this with the second batch; it seems to have worked. For reasons of sanitation I still feel inclined to boil eggs for a handful of minutes, then shock them in cold tap water, as I have done for most of my life. During the breakfast I made fresh eggs which were supposed to be 'soft-boiled' . . . I left them in too long.

Then Ge. and J. and I distributed the marzipan (little bars with fig/vodka, apple/calvados, pineapple, etc. flavouring), chocolate eggs, and lots of squares from chocolate bars (white, nougat, marzipan-filled, dark and milk) over the plates, over the tablecloth, and over one of those delightful Tuscan plates with the raspberry and yellow and dark blue patterns and a rooster in the middle.

Mama, once she woke up, went to the bakery for buns and croissants, and at the last moment I made tea and coffee (I forgot the paper filter so water and coffee grounds quietly splattered all over and, as if a soaked chamois cloth and towel weren't enough evidence of the answer, I wondered where the extra four cups of water had gone), and Ge. heated milk for hot chocolate and the coffee. With the freshly baked brioches we had sliced gouda, black currant jam, sliced egg; and a plateful of cold cuts — among them prosciutto di Parma, which I rolled up loosely.

Gi. has Been Abroad for the last couple of days,