Ghosts of Yesteryear

The past week has been quiet. After recovering from a stomach upset that was a fairly effective way to lose weight but made it difficult to eat much for a few days, I've mostly been indoors researching the non-fiction book I started last year.

As part of the research I fetched out the silver cutlery that Opa had bought, and that we only use for guests occasionally, as well as a linen tablecloth and napkin, which after ironing I could put together into a table setting according to a turn-of-the-century cookbook. Then I took a handful of photos for my fairly bulging archive for the book itself...

Watching the beginning of the black-and-white silent film Mickey, an American production that was the highest-grossing film of 1918, was more of a 'trip.' After apparent animal cruelty and allusions to corporal punishment were interspersed with the intended comedy and the romantic plot, I figured that sometimes it's better to leave the past in the past.

All four siblings were in Berlin today. So we chatted, sang the songs that we're laboriously learning in four-part harmony together with our mother ("As With Gladness Men of Old" has been the easiest to learn so far, whereas Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus" is still an ordeal), and ate take-out Indian food for dinner. And my godfather came to visit, and a friend of the family!

It's hovering around -1°C and the pavements are wet, but if I were to go outdoors and seek out a little nature again it might be worthwhile despite the month. Yellow flowers that aren't quite like forsythia blossoms have already appeared in the allotment gardens, and clumps of snowdrops have been multiplying in a local park. Not to mention the leftover autumn berries: I thought I spotted deep red barberries, looking orphaned on their leafless twigs, as well as lurking Oregon grapes and the unmissable droplets of white and pink snowberries.

Last week I sent off two job applications. Then I checked to see if the old TestDaF certification I received over 10 years ago can still be verified by the institute where I wrote it. (The institute quickly wrote back; they can't verify it.) Which means that I'll need to do the certification all over again to attend university in November. O tempora, o mores.

I'm also 'doodling' on the piano more regularly. The Bach-Busoni chaconne, the few songs I know for Epiphany, a stray Édith Piaf arrangement ... It adds another dimension to playing the chaconne that I've now read a little about Busoni and seen his grave and learned that he lived in Berlin for a while; I always pictured him working away in a plastered house, wreathed by the ghosts of the Renaissance and Baroque past, in an Italian city like Florence.