Soccer's Golden Fleece

Given an interesting sleeping schedule I only watched a minute or so of Portugal vs. North Korea before nodding off on the sofa. Since I liked the Korean team in their first match, against Brazil,the seven goals against it would probably not have been an edifying spectacle anyway. Besides dancing on the grave of the vanquished has scanty charm; even Germany's 4-0 win against Australia was a little depressing for me.

When I woke up again Switzerland began its match against Chile, which I followed intently during the second half. I found myself hoping that the Swiss would win though the Chileans looked marginally better and, either because of the red card against the Swiss or for other reasons, the players in white kit were clearly on the defensive in a tacit admission of subordination. Even then the defense, though staunchly arrayed in its two rows every now and then, was not so agile and indeed dreadfully porous. Which may have been an "offside trap" (today's the first time I really took note of the term; I imagine it means that the defense loiters toward midfield so that any opposing players who break through are offside and may not attempt a goal). Either way the Swiss, even with one player down, doughtily preserved their 0-1 loss, as was the fate of the similarly disadvantaged Germans in their ridiculously, pedantically refereed game last week, so good for them. The Chilean team may be all right but I don't find it either very sympathetic nor brilliant, and the lovely fluent passing which distinguished its match against Honduras and was brilliant appeared to clash and vanish against the methodology of the Swiss, with the result that the game was a fairly unenlightening 90+overtime minutes of deconstructed brawling over a wide area.

***

Intermittently I played the final movement of Schubert's sonata D959 until 2-4 pages before the end. The theme is lovely but the rest of it is an example of what is commonly remarked, that Schubert can't bring himself to finish his sonatas at times. Why people don't say this more often of Beethoven compositions I can't fathom, and personally I haven't felt bored, precisely, by the three last sonatas of Schubert's. Besides I am unfairly inclined to grumble that whoever minds hearing out a Schubert sonata is deficient either in soul or in the elementary talent of tuning music out and daydreaming if you are bored. But in this case, considering that it was sightreading and therefore not the pinnacle of musical fluidity, I had to concede that enough is as good as a feast.

Three or four years ago I listened to Alfred Brendel's recordings and, though with the very last sonata Papa's and Clara Haskil's versions fortunately come to mind, and though at the time I liked his recordings, the memory of it in my ear is a tremendous obstacle to finding my own approach, and a hopefully characteristic approach, to Schubert. One thing that doesn't come out in recordings as much, I think, as in quotidian sightreading, is that Schubert can be immensely weird. The second movement of D959, which is in my view initially bitter and melancholic (I think that the saddest movements of Schubert are most faithfully rendered when they pluck at the heartstrings in a jarringly wrong and discordant way, though of course the composer resolves this with a happier movement or key soon afterward), but also uncomplicated and lovely, is tangled chaos by the second page.

* * *

Inspired by its match against Chile, and pending egregious displays of ineptitude or of poor sportsmanship, I have adopted Honduras as the World Cup team for whom to cheer. In the game against Spain, though they appeared overwhelmed at times, they gave a good battle. They passed well amongst each other and even did the billiard-like passes (which I love) where the ball deflects off the foot of one teammate to surely arrive at another's. Besides they were diligent and courageous about running for and through the ranks of Spanish defenders, and parrying for the ball with even multiple opponents, instead of just passing off the ball to a teammate in a freer position. And I have the impression that Honduras's goalkeeper is really quite good. Though evidently better than Honduras, I didn't think that Spain showed glimmerings of especial brilliance; yet its first goal was, to borrow from the British(?) vernacular, a corker. Fortunately the game was not sabotaged by silly refereeing, though the incident of the nose-stubbing of an Honduran by a Spanish player did suggest a yellow card, since neither player was near the ball and it was a disagreeable piece of aggression. But the nose didn't bleed, so the principal sanguinary spectacle was the split lip and spewing blood of a Spanish player.

It's not very saintly but I think that fouls have their place in soccer, if they aren't done with intent to inflict pain or debilitate (the jargon for debilitating fouls is evidently a "reducer"). It was funny in Spain vs. Honduras how the experienced players simply hopped over extended feet, etc., so that the shabby tricks were rendered ridiculous; what was even lovelier was the way the Hondurans and Chileans tumbled like acrobats during their game against each other, and gave as good as they got instead of one side victimizing the other. On the other hand it is simple to cause a nasty injury, so it's best not to tempt fate. And I really detest fouls as a risky, lazy shortcut in lieu of acquiring the ball through classic footwork and speed, and of running as quickly as possible to head off an opponent.

What I detest even more is the pretense of having been fouled. A little ankle-clutching now and then may have no further effects if the referee is unimpressed, and sometimes players who indulge in acting have really been fouled and are only seeking redress (though if the foul was really that bad they wouldn't have to act out suffering). And of course soccer players are genuinely injured and put at risk of losing their careers from time to time in a way which the casual television viewer cannot feel through the screen. But the dramatic facsimile of agonizing pain which would not look out of place in medieval paintings of inventive martyrdom — glass shards and heated iron grilles and all — is an insult to real injuries; it unfairly biases the game in favour of the ham; and depending on the circumstances it could give the other player involved a totally undeserved sense of guilt. Not to mention that it's unkind to deceive the referee and make him an accomplice to one's cheating.

Lastly, as a certain player who obtained the second yellow card which turned into a red card for Kaká proved, in the age of video and replays it is a stupid step, though it must be confessed that there are supposed fouls or handballs or so on which I watch over and over again and thereafter still don't know what happened.

* * *

Which brings me to the sorry quandary of France at the World Cup. The following may be entirely made up, partly because of the vagaries of reading comprehension and memory and partly because the press isn't always reliable, but here is a version of events:

Thanks to the gossip on the Guardian blogs I gather that Zinedine Zidane was really the coach for France during the last Cup here in Berlin, and that he and Raymond Domenech (who is himself sketchy as a coach also because he has used astrology to decide for instance which player is placed where on the line-up, like Louis XI in Quentin Durward, and in any case is not much respected by the team) are at loggerheads. Besides I'm guessing that it may have demoralized the team that they advanced into the World Cup because Thierry Henry's handball in the game against Ireland wasn't acted on by the referee. Before the game with Uruguay two players asked Domenech to change the formation to a different one and he agreed, only to find out that the formation had been suggested by Zidane, whereupon he rescinded. Then came the inglorious tie.

In the next match came the inglorious defeat against Mexico, in which Thierry Henry, punitively kept on the bench, sat in his thick dark blue jacket and crossed his arms in Achilles-like disgruntled exile from battle. So the France was deprived of a good striker and played with what I thought were flashes of genius and of effort for instance on the part of Franck Ribéry, but with a resignation to failure, middlingness, and a gaping lack of cooperation. I admit to feeling somewhat weepy after that game. And every time the camera went to Domenech, he just stood there, leaning against the pole and looking inscrutable, except for one time where he gestured in exasperation.

Afterwards, of course, it turns out that the striker Nicolas Anelka had flared up at the manager during halftime and indulged in a very rude sentence, which I imagine to be common if sadly unimaginative language in the sports milieu, even if directing it against a coach is unwise. For some reason French officials, though they hail from a nation which might be thought to view these things in blasé fashion, declared themselves shocked! and Anelka has been sent home. In the meanwhile, Patrice Evra, captain of the French team (I'm glad not to be in his shoes), professed himself understandably disappointed at the weak effort exemplified in the game against Mexico. Regarding Anelka's remarks both he and Zinedine Zidane stated to the press that they were out of place and that no one was seeking to defend them as proper behaviour, but that removing him from the French team was going too far.

And of course in the next training session the French team showed up but refused to train in support of their fallen banished comrade, leading to an altercation whereafter the field fitness coach (a self-appointed intermediary) stormed off in a huff and threw down his badge in the process. Then intervention of Sarkozy, and so on and so forth, and now they've trained again, though on an inauspiciously thunderous day where, according to the AP video footage I saw, the sky was about as lively in tint as the cellar of an Irish grey stone mansion. What is questionable is whether the team will appear in full number (aside from Anelka, of course) for the match against South Africa tomorrow. [Which, it seems, I'll have to mostly miss because of a summons to the bank. )c,: What rotten, rotten luck.]

*

Anyway, what I don't understand is the puritanical slant of the animosity against the French players. The World Cup is not a pristine event.

There is corruption and match-fixing, the betting around the game outcomes has its shadows like any other gambling, the staff are partly ill-paid, the funds expended on the stadium will hopefully bring joy to many South Africans but may also have deprived many others who live on welfare and so on, and it is to a great extent likewise a capitalist orgy of dubiously ethical companies seeking to put their brand on the "beautiful game." The fans are maybe serious devotees of the game; others seem like self-aggrandizers who expect people they've never met to live out their dreams, and some hound the players and deprive them of their right to privacy. Maybe they have enough money to buy tickets to the game without pain, maybe they are dipping into household funds or denying themselves better things for the privilege of taking chaotic transportation to an enormous arena and then taking their place on the hard and loveless benches of the modern amphitheatre. The soccer players themselves are on a strict training regimen, constricted in what they eat and what they do and where they go, and even if they are rich, wealth brings its own problems and I doubt if it is any substitute for freedom, uninterrupted schooling, and the time to develop other interests and skills. Besides they have to play so many games with their teams (Chelsea, Bayern München, Real Madrid, etc.) and then in regional competitions and then in the qualifiers and friendlies before the World Cup; after a while, why should they care? The commentators on the game may, like the fans, be serious devotees of the game; others are resentful pedants who are envious of the players or who look down on them as numbskulled pawns or who always believe that the players could and should have done something better.

If someone tires of the hypocrisy of the game, of their powerlessness to determine how they play even though they are the ones who must carry it out, or of the illusion that the Cup is of transcendent importance compared to different issues (even mundane ones of leading a reasonable life), I am glad that they have the courage to rebel, and I am glad if their teammates support them in this rebellion. I never thought I'd quote this approvingly, but after all the devise of France is Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

A Humming Piano and Soccer Stadia

Since the inaugural game between South Africa and Mexico I have determined to plunge wholeheartedly into the World Cup, and so have seen I believe at least two minutes, and read the entire minute-by-minute reports on the guardian.co.uk, for every game so far. J., Ge. and I have taken to reading the reports out loud, by turns, and intoning "Gooooaaal!" in unison whenever it occurs.

I find that it is not making me much wiser as to the rules of the game, strategy, etc., or indeed about soccer in general, but it is interesting nonetheless and I like observing everything. Today I woke up toward the end of the Holland-Denmark match and saw maybe the last ten minutes, watched the Japan-Cameroon game more, and then followed the Italy-Paraguay game for the first half before being forced to desist in the second half because someone thought that an episode of Tatort was must-see television. At which point I threw a play-tantrum and stormed off to find something else to do.

For much of the remaining time the computer which I prefer for internet activities was occupied (by T., unobjectionably dispatching university coursework and being an example to us all). So I nursed a headache with much holding of cool hand to forehead (like a Victorian lady with the vapours, come to think of it), drinking of salted water and a tiny glass of port, lying down, and at long last an aspirin. On the piano I went through the Kinderszenen, other little Schumann works, one of Chopin's Etudes ("Revolutionary," for the first time) and the Raindrop Prelude, a movement or three from Bach Partitas 1 and 3, etc. Last evening I watched music clips from medici.tv's YouTube channel, and even though they were samplers of perhaps three to four minutes' length at most, they were inspiring. (Though I will not be playing a keyboard arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" any time soon, and listening to the four-piano version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons was like four tiny pneumatic drills taking up residence in my brain; you really need the varied timbre and flexibility of a chamber orchestra to render the music endearingly.)

Then I basted together more of the torn lace in the collar of a nightgown, prepared a fresh batch of homemade moth paper (letter-size printer paper left over from Canada + cloves + dried thyme leaves + considerable smashing so that spice/herb oils soak into paper, dusted off and folded in half and cut into strips to lay in between the clothing), and shook out a pair of pants which had lain in the moth-infested pile. I must find a clever way to store clothing. The best way has the disadvantage of being inelegant and musty, and I am still skeptical if it works; I have not seen a solitary moth in clothes when I bundle them into plastic shopping bags and hang them from doorknobs, our clothes-rack, etc. . . . On second thoughts, my quibbles are insane.

[Pause while I scramble off to remove some of the piled-up clothing into a bag and hang it up.]

Besides I've been going through Teach Yourself Beginner's Latin again, which was one of my projects during the year after high school graduation. I haven't made much progress yet, but most of this is mindless review; for instance the uses of the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive and ablative are still present in my mind even if my knowledge of their endings even in the first and second declensions is faltering. Either way I'm still in the "equus laborat - equi laborant" stage. But I did reach a set of quotations from Latin literature, some of which I already memorized during the gap year and have been pompously citing to Mama when they seem apposite ever since. "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant," is one, and "O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt," is another. But "Verberat nos et lacerat fortuna" can be used in many situations too, and then there's a long one with "Interea Eos"* or something, from Virgil, which though a pain to memorize might replace the refrain of "Cast off the shackles of yesterday" from Mary Poppins as my all-purpose quotation a propos of toil.

*[*cough* I meant "Aurora interea miseris mortalibus," etc. The other quotations are from Tacitus, Cicero, and Seneca, respectively.]

Anyway, to return to the World Cup, I did find the Germany-Australia match last evening very good, and though it irritated me greatly when the ARD channel's commentator kept bemoaning the horridness of the Japan-Cameroon match (now that was a chaotic mess, and I thought it highly unfair that it wasn't a draw because they were both tremendously lousy) especially in comparison to the German performance yesterday, I have to admit that it did set a high bar. Its specific merits: the precision of the passes, intricate set-ups for goal attempts, way in which the players would not just roll the ball to the closest teammate when they were haplessly stuck in midfield but would really look for an opening and also pass the ball far across to a teammate if he was in a good position, clever footwork, and the absence of impatient kicks in the general direction of the goal whenever a forward became tired of fending off the opposing team's defence. It was also a pretty clean game where diving and fouling were concerned. The Australian team was clearly not as good but they didn't give up hope, were fast and reasonably agile, and played in a strong aggressive spirit without committing horrid fouls. (As far as I could tell.) But the straight red card for the Australian Tim Cahill did seem disproportionate and mean.

Where the teams are concerned, I am not "rooting" for any one in particular, though it would be highly reprehensible of me not to support Germany. The three teams which have impressed me are Germany and Argentina and Paraguay, though in the latter case it was admittedly because my expectations had been low. I still dislike Italy's team from the last World Cup, and specifically have not gotten over the resentment about the Materazzi-Zidane incident; besides which I am suspicious about their ethics regarding diving and the like. But if they prove a good team I wouldn't want them to lose unfairly. Altogether I tend to find myself being "for" a team in the course of a match, only to forget all about the preference when someone from the opposite team is launching himself on a good run for the goal.

As for the vuvuzelas, I can still hear them sometimes when I'm not watching the game at all, but for some reason am heatedly in their favour. Having lived in the countryside/suburbs I've been surrounded and menaced by my fair share of buzzing flies and wasps, and have felt a visceral dislike of the noise, but these horn-thingies sound benign and are relatively easy to ignore. Perhaps it's snobbish, but I've never been fond of the mindless colosseum roar anyway. If the horns seriously bother someone, though, I'll understand if they're banned. Anyway, as many others have pointed out, the "expert" soccer commentary on TV is all too often far more irritating, boring, and mindnumbing. And tediously condescending to Africa (which is evidently still considered as a country instead of a continent).

The Third Estate; or, a House Divided

It is the early morning again. I've spent much of the night reading the letters of Madame du Deffand, a booklet entitled Les prérogatives du Tiers-Etat, and the elucidations on proper attire in "Horseback Riding 101" (Suite 101.com), looking at photos from Brittany which are much beautified by the sunshine and the May flowering of the gorse on the cliffs, and listening to music in the background as usual.

The following is a reaaallly long discursion on what I've been reading in the way of historical source material, and if the boredom becomes overpowering, please feel free to skip it!

***

Les prérogatives du Tiers-Etat is an oddity, its stated author being an anonymous duchess who had been elevated from low birth to her title by virtue of fortune, and its actual author apparently being Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli. Published apparently in 1789, in the thick of the Estates-General, it is a heated defense of the Third Estate and its right to political representation. It begins with the narrating duchess's indignant statement that many noble houses have contracted marriages to commoners so that their dignity and possessions and lifestyle are shored up by the wealth which they previously did not possess, and that therefore the aristocracy has no right to distance itself from the supposed lower class.

In History 120, I think, we were told that while in the English aristocracy the law of primogeniture governed inheritances — which means that the property and title would pass on to the eldest son, while the younger sons had to become clergymen, officers, or something else respectable to earn their living, as any Jane Austen reader will know well —, in France the property was divided among the children. I had difficulties understanding how the French system works until I remembered fairy tales where for example the eldest son gets the house, the middle son the mill, and the youngest the donkey. So it may be absurdly untrue, but I'm guessing that over time properties were divided up until the parcels of inherited land were too little to generate much revenue to live upon. But I hadn't heard of marriages between aristocrat males and plutocrat females in this century and country at all, and at first found it difficult not to feel as if I had hopped into an Edwardian satire (or tediously lachrymose portrait à la Henry James) of marriages between crude but loaded Americans with useless but titled Britishers.

At times I found the Duchess character far too strident, but I did laugh at this scene:

[M. le Duc, mon cher époux] apprit dès ce moment à me connoître. Je commençai par lui prouver, d'un ton encore plus fier que le sien, qu'il n'y a de vraie grandeur que celle de l'ame; que nous sommes tous égaux dans le premier principe, & que l'incomparable Métastase n'a jamais mieux parlé que lorsqu'il a dit il nascere e caso, & non virtu: la naissance est une chose fortuite & non une vertu : je terminai la leçon par me faire apporter des sacs d'or, par en répandre les rouleaux avec profusion sur la table & les remuer à grand bruit, tout en disant, voilà mon aïeul, mon bisaïeul, mon quadrisaïeul, &c.

Le stratagème réussit, comme je m'y attendois [. . .].

In English: "[The Duke, my dear spouse] learned to know me from this moment. I began by proving to him, in tones prouder still than his, that there is no true grandeur but that of the soul; that we are all equal in the foremost principle, & that the incomparable Metastasio has never spoken better than when he said il nascere e caso, & non virtu: birth is a fortuitous thing and not a virtue. I concluded the lesson by having sacks of gold fetched, by profusely spreading the rolls on the table and stirring them with great noise, whilst saying, here is my grandsire, my great-grandsire, my great-great-grandsire, &c. The stratagem succeeded, as I had expected [. . .]."

After this the booklet, the author shedding the lusty persona of the duchess, takes a detour into a gentle allegory. A king is contemptuous of commoners (roturiers) until the day when he lands in a pool and is on the point of drowning, the gentlemen of the court standing about impotently since they cannot swim, until a couple of low-born men dive in and fish him out.

Much surprised to find that his valiant courtiers had not come to the rescue, he listens with interest as his jester suggests that the Third Estate does quite as much for him as the nobility, and decides to test this idea the following day. Of course the moment he awakens the servants are already pulling open the curtains, lighting the fire, bringing his clothes, cooking his breakfast, etc., and when all dressed he goes to conduct business with his two secretaries, of course these are commoners. Later he reads books and wanders in the gardens tended by, and hunts with the assistance, basks in the art and architecture and theatre, and listens to the music of commoners. In the newspapers, written by . . . commoners, he is instructed of the grand patriotic contributions of . . . commoners. When narrative expediency ignites a fire underneath the king's window, it is extinguished by . . . commoners. Etc.

Overwhelmed by the burden of empirical evidence, and not much impressed by any magnificent contribution on the part of his courtiers, the king is converted to an admirer of the Third Estate. But when during a hunt his life is imperilled at the tusks of the boar, a gentleman leaps in to save him, and the king recognizes that the First Estate likewise serves its purpose and has its merits. ("[ . . ] alors il reconnut que toutes les classes des citoyens sont également nécessaires; qu'il seroit absurde d'en rejetter une, pour en élever une autre.")

The narrator draws this lovely — and, in my opinion, very thought-provoking — tale to a close, and then goes on to paint a highly improbable (satirical?) picture of the saintly commoners, who are kinder to the impoverished aristocrat than many of his peers, etc. And then he describes the meek ambitions of the Third Estate and its absolute respect for the nobility:

il sait que la Noblesse a des priviléges incontestables auxquels les Rois mêmes ne peuvent ni doivent toucher. Eh! qui doute, que les Gentilshommes sont les remparts de la Monarchie, qu'ils l'ont toujours soutenue aux dépens de leur propre vie, & qu'il n'y a rien de plus respectable & de plus grand qu'une longue succession d'aïeux, qui, de père en fils, maintiennent la Couronne, & sont les suppôts de la Royauté. L'histoire se plaît à rapporter les epoques honorables pour la Noblesse, & le Tiers-Etat se plaît à les lire. Loin d'en être jaloux, il se félicite d'appartenir à une Royaume, où des noms consacrés par une antique bravoure éternisent sa splendeur.

In translation: "it knows that the Nobility possesses incontestable privileges which the Kings themselves neither can nor may touch. Well, who doubts that the Gentility are the ramparts of the monarchy, which they have always supported at the expense of their own life, & that there is nothing more respectable & greater than a long succession of ancestors who, from father to son, tend to the Crown & are the supports of the Monarchy? History pleases itself by reporting the honourable periods for the Nobility, & the Third Estate pleases itself by reading them. Far from being jealous, it felicitates itself upon belonging to a Kingdom, where the names consecrated by antique bravery immortalize its splendour."

It must be confessed that, while copying out this passage into my notes, in between the first sentence and the second, I inserted a note:

[N.B.: Choppy, choppy.]

Simply to evoke what precisely happened in the years after M. de Caraccioli or whoever published this effusion, and how the Nobility escaped this time without a hair on its collective head being hurt and with its inalienable privileges being preserved with utmost care.

Either way I like being made to think about the role of the aristocracy, and the role of the working class, and the ideal role of both. Besides which the booklet is an insight into the snobbery which characterized some of the upper class, and is in my view, though firmly entrenched in the mentality of the former, poised on the knife-edge where the Ancien Régime ends and the Republic begins.

***

I could go on and on. But I won't, for now. (c:

Euterpe and the Toad

It's late or early enough that the birds are twittering in great concentration and the sky has turned a bluer shade of midnight, and I guess that the volume of street traffic will swell soon.

This afternoon Uncle Pu came to visit, and to the accompaniment of chocolate and ice cream (I poured a little cognac over mine as an experiment and liked it) we all talked about matters political and otherwise for hours as usual.

Then Pudel and Papa and I had a chamber music session for the first time in months. First there were Haydn's trios in C, D and G major, and then a movement or so each of two Beethoven trios. Haydn went swimmingly and as far as I could tell we were easily and wholly absorbed in the congenial music. The portions where the piano has the melody didn't inspire as much terror because of the pressure to be note-perfect as they once did.

But the first Beethoven trio we tried was confusing. I don't know it well and didn't have the melody of the opening movement in my ear. Besides I found the theme of that movement a trifle meandering and boring. Whereas Papa and Pudel clearly like it. I guess that when playing chamber music it is harder to indulge one's enjoyable prejudices without trampling on the joy of other people. Zut alors!

Fortunately the Archduke trio is familiar. But in the Andante there are broken arpeggios in triplets or whatever they're called, which I had to painstakingly play through and couldn't fudge because the violin and cello were depending on me to keep the time (why are you asking me of all people to do that? was my unspoken question) and deliver the right cues.

In one of the Victorian/Edwardian-era books on music at gutenberg.org, I (mis)remember reading something to the effect that everyone has a scale or two which he plays unusually well. I like this positive outlook on the music pupil's capacities, meant to describe the humble beginner as much as the great performer, but it must be confessed that the reverse side of the coin is hopeless mediocrity in certain other scales. I am terrible at playing arpeggios, so they straggle along in ungainly manner and rarely if ever attain the dignity of melody. There is a Scarlatti sonata whose second half I often cravenly avoid playing just because the left hand is full of arpeggios and so it is usually twice as slow and half as delightful to hear as the rest of the piece.

Playing an instrument is a cycle of thinking and feeling the music, hearing the music as it is played, and the fingers carrying it out; one confirms the other, and problems that appear trivial can throw a decisive spanner in the works. As far as I can tell it doesn't matter if you are animated by the purest wellspring of inspiration which ever swelled the song of Euterpe, if your fingers are having a clumsy day; you feel the clumsiness, hear the clumsiness whereby it interferes with your guiding idea of the music and erodes your confidence, and so the clumsiness infects and muddies even your inspiration until everything is middling. Or, the other way around, if your fingers are nimble and ready, they can ignite an inspired mood even if you sat down at the piano with the soul of a disgruntled toad.

E.T.A.: The titles of these blog posts appear to be becoming very pretentious. My apologies.

A Mile-Long Essay by the Wayside

Over the weekend we celebrated J.'s and Gi.'s birthdays. The feasting comprised above all a chocolate chip cake, lemon cake, and marble cake, decorated with Smarties or M&Ms as the tradition demands.

Then I also spent much of Saturday baking Bienenstich, a pastry which is very popular in this household and which is concocted of a biscuity or yeasty dough, cut in half and filled with vanilla pudding, and topped with a caramelized layer of sliced almonds. I use the recipe in the Dr. Oetker Grundbackbuch. The pudding filling is too much of a fuss for me, so we always have pudding on the side. My preparation of the yeast dough (which intimidates me despite the dozens of times I've made it) was eccentric and would have struck horror into the soul of any professional baker, but once it was out of the oven the taste, texture and appearance were so perfect that they honestly did embody the Platonic ideal. We had no almonds so I substituted ground hazelnuts, which were equally delicious and looked like a baklava filling after they were mixed into the butter and sugar and milk.

***

At the piano I've been looking at Chopin's ballades and études and so on, but haven't so far managed to sightread the first pages or two with much justice, so I mostly give up and leaf on to the Raindrop Prelude and try yet again not to overpedal and to slur the chords in the left hand properly. Then, after coming across Schumann's Piano Concerto in a minor maybe a week ago (it's undoubtedly a major work, but I was ignorant of its existence) and bookmarking the recordings by Dinu Lipatti and Sviatoslav Richter on YouTube, I found a score in a pocket-book-sized edition on top of the piano, and played bits of it today for the first time. It is kind of fascinating seeing what all the other instruments are doing, especially because the scores for the other concertos I practice are all transcribed so that the orchestra's part is smushed into a second piano part. (Some day I'll have to learn the proper musicological terms for that.)

The reason why I've been playing the piano more than usual is because the attack on the Gaza flotilla knocked me for an emotional loop. After brooding about politics unhealthily during the Bush years I don't want to say or think hateful things, or lose sight of what actually goes on, or feel terrible every day again. So instead I played Beethoven's early sonatas, Chopin's Polonaise Héroïque, and Rachmaninoff's Prelude in g minor.

***

To return to politics, I thought a lot about writing to the Israeli government, simply expressing sorrow at what occurred, but vacillated too much and ended up not sending anything. Reading commentary on Gawker and Jezebel (especially the latter) lowered my blood pressure because it was often clear-eyed and sympathetic, and the news coverage in general reassures me that the press is fulfilling its task and that governments like the UK's, Spain's and Greece's are adequately defending the law. (Even the New York Times forbore from muttering about bad public relations in its first editorial on the subject, but instead wrote fairly and reminded its readers about the poverty and hunger in the Gaza Strip.)

But I am disappointed in the American and Canadian governments for suggesting that the Israeli government carry out its own probe into the incident. Practically no government could be trusted with such a probe at any level, and even the courts often fail with such cases. An example that comes to mind (though maybe there are extenuating circumstances I don't know about) is when New York police officers got away with shooting 50 bullets into an unarmed man (Sean Bell). So the suggestion is stupid, biased, and callous toward the people who died and their friends and relatives. It's not that I want to see revenge done; I just think that the propaganda must be effectively disproven so that the memory of the dead is not traduced, and perhaps some remorse instilled in the people who are responsible.

I'm surprised anyway that an Israeli voter would put up with the country's soldiers being ordered to commit outright piracy. But too many people evidently subscribe to the brainless belief that you can "ambush" soldiers who are illegally trying to take over your ship in international waters. Assigning the aggression to the people on board the Mavi Marmara is like walking into the wall of a library and then suing the municipality for building the wall there in the first place.

Which is not to say that I don't have huge problems with calling oneself a peace activist and then hitting someone with a baseball bat; I think if an activist does not decide to unresistingly endure imprisonment and ill-treatment should the situation befall him, he cannot call himself a peace activist. In this case I especially see a problem with hitting soldiers who are bearing weapons and boarding your ship but have not physically assaulted you (yet) or unequivocally signalled their intentions to do that. But maybe the "peace" label was fixed on the activists by someone else. Besides I don't quite understand why it takes 600 people to deliver the aid, except if they are trained in its distribution or if the principle was to have safety in numbers (that went well).

I think that a pragmatic approach to aid is best, basically acquire the supplies and make sure that they will actually be useful, find a direct and safe way to deliver them, deliver them, then leave. Besides I think that ordinary people can participate in cultural and other exchanges to relieve the isolation of those who live in the Gaza Strip. Political pressure has to go through diplomatic channels behind closed doors, I guess, and though I'm not sure if it has much of an effect in practice I think that unbiased reporting on events in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip is intensely valuable. But I think that personal pressure might work, too; if you're friends with an influential member of any government, I think that letting him or her know quite clearly and unaggressively what you've observed and which conclusions you've drawn, and if he really makes a wrongheaded decision making your disappointment succinctly but decidedly clear, could have a good effect on policy. Sensationalism and opinionmongering and righteous ranting are sometimes justified and effective but they do make something of a circus out of the suffering of others, the irony being that many people seem to like this circus and wouldn't care much about politics if that aspect were missing.

Anyway, I hope these thoughts weren't too inaccurate or offensive.

***

As for my French Revolution research (I could probably have led into this subject in some subtly clever way, but anyway), I've gone off on a tangent to read up on horses. It's reminding me of the two weeks spent in a children's horseriding camp with T. when I was ten years old or so, on the initiative of my grandmother. The camp was run a little like a cult: the trainers were hierophants, the older children or the ones who already had lessons the knowledgeable acolytes, and we the lowly neophytes. We had to navigate the intricacies of grooming and caring for the horses, and were threatened with dire anecdotes of wrongdoing which led to injury and death in the complex and fragile animals; I didn't like this fear-of-God pedagogy so much and would have liked friendlier explanations of how to treat horses kindly and without making honest and disastrous mistakes. What also played into the hierarchical character of the camp was the presumptive fact that many of the children were in private schools and wealthy, and rightly or wrongly I had the impression that they were a little snobby and spoiled and prone to Gossip-Girl-style backbiting, and frighteningly self-assured and well-educated, as the stereotype goes.

Either way it is unsurprising that I never caught the horse fever, though I did start drawing horses, diagramming the "tack" (saddle, girth, bridle, etc.), and borrowing a handful of relevant books from the library. Which effect even the moving literary travails of Black Beauty never had.

But considering how integral transportation by aid of horse was historically, I thought it high time to learn about it, and besides I still harbour fantasies of spending three to six months working on a horse or dude or cattle ranch in Australia or New Zealand or the US, or any kind of farm in North America or Europe outside of Germany (for reasons of the grass seeming more exciting on the other side of the border). Being jobless first of all it's difficult to grasp the reality of hard work, and secondly one feels the need to overcompensate for the inactivity. I've recognized to a degree that I genuinely prefer to sit around at home, but I think that this very preference is a problem in itself, though not one which I care for people to sit around in judgment on. The principal cause is that I don't expect to find anything worthwhile if I emerge from the apartment, because I've tried it and it wasn't fruitful; and until there is a job description or a job interview or anything that convinces me otherwise, that's the way it will remain.

An Epistolary Flower by the Wayside

Discovered this afternoon in the course of further French Revolution research:

Lettres de la Marquise Du Deffand à Horace Walpole, Tome III
(published in Paris, 1812)
Extract from a letter, CLXIII, written on Sunday, October 25th, 1773

Mon projet est de vous envoyer toutes sortes de rapsodies par M. Craufurd; je ne pénetre pas ce qui le retient ici [en France] si long-temps; ce n'est certainement pas parce qu'il s'y amuse. Il s'ennuie à la mort, et prétend toujours être fort malade; il n'y a jamais eu deux êtres plus différents que vous et lui. Je le vois tous les jours; je me crois un prodige de raison en comparaison de lui.

Source: Gallica.bnf.fr

Rightly or wrongly, Mme. du Deffand reminds me a little of my paternal grandmother. Certainly she is an ideal letter-writer and wit and warm friend to Walpole, even if the constant ego-stroking seems indelicate. When glimpses of sentimentality appear, it is neither sickly nor exaggerated.

I like the passage quoted above because it is so blunt but finely expressed, and does awaken some curiosity as to the personality of "M. Craufurd" even if based on the brief description his particular brand of recalcitrant obstinacy sounds like the petulance of a thoroughgoing bore.

But if he is (as a cursory websearch leads me to suspect) indeed Quentin/Quintin Craufurd, his life — spanning a sojourn in India, literary pursuits, and being a cook in the broth of the French monarchs' flight to Varennes — must have been lively.

In hasty, 18th-century-esque translation:

My project is to send to you all manner of rhapsodies by M. Craufurd. I cannot discern what retains him here [in France] so long; it is certainly not because he is well entertained there. He is languishing of boredom and always pretending to be greatly ill; never have there been two beings more different than you and he. I see him daily; I believe myself a prodigy of reason in comparison to him.

To Become a Birdbrain

While I'm still sleep-deprived and therefore less inhibited I thought I might as well announce my foray into the ranks of Twitter. Two weeks ago I hadn't the slightest intention of following in the footsteps of Twitter users who, according to the scathing stereotypes, inform their beleaguered friends and the world of such thrilling events as "Just had a sandwich!!1!" whilst littering these effusions with typos and horrendous contractions like "lol."

But Facebook is royally peeving. The reason I went on there was mainly so that people could keep up contact with me if they wanted to, and because I needed closure on high school. On the other hand it disturbs me that the information I give the website is so voluminous and personal in nature, and that access to it can be left wide open to the general public whenever a brilliant redesign of the privacy settings occurs; it disturbs me to know how much I could find out about other people, and so far I've religiously only looked at photos, etc., where I was wholly sure that the person wouldn't mind; and I don't like the compulsion to chase popularity just like in the high school I was trying to get closure on, nor the fact that a "Facebook friend" is a very different thing from a real friend. As therapy to overcome feeling despised and isolated in school, Facebook has been great, just because I have to confront it and because if someone picks up contact it seems like they can't entirely hate me, but I find it difficult to write updates or notes about links as naturally as I would if my Facebook friends were, let's say, my brothers. Besides it's depressing to be aware that the things that really interest and inspire me may be received as deadly dull and irritating clutter in the newsfeed of someone else.

On Twitter, by contrast, I am a total stranger and I (not being a celebrity or being connected to a network of friends there) don't have to prove anything to anybody. If the mood strikes to "tweet" something myself, I can practice condensing thoughts into short and entertaining sentences, which is especially good practice for someone who writes longwindedly and likes to qualify her statements. If people like what I write I earn their attention and (virtual) conversation fairly. Aside from that, and as importantly, I can keep up to date on magazine and newspaper articles, press releases and other information from charities, and publicly available videos and event announcements from cultural organizations, governments, etc. Besides I can remain in touch with the projects and thoughts of actors and other famous people whom I admire, and be certain that the information they are sharing is not unduly personal and is freely given to the world at large, and that I don't have to be a pain in the neck or support the tabloids and other intrusive press to find it.

So far among the people whom I follow on Twitter the most consistently amusing is Armando Iannucci; most gently didactic Martha Stewart, who is currently travelling in southeast Asia and whose reports and photos are National Geographic in miniature; most informative of events like a press conference with David Cameron and Angela Merkel is Downing Street 10 [Number10gov]; most filled with righteous indignation the Reverend Al Sharpton; and the most absorbed in peace and love and projects for furtherance of the same is undoubtedly Yoko Ono.

There are plenty of other interesting people, like Karl Lagerfeld who in resemblance to Carine Roitfeld and Anna Wintour writes brief declarations of his life and fashion philosophies with a humourlessness which in his case is imbued with what I consider as Eeyorish gloom; actors like Susan Sarandon or authors like Zadie Smith who have sadly tired of their Twitter accounts already; and pop culture entities who figure prominently in Gawker and Jezebel and whom I happily avoid like the plague in any other context, e.g. Perez Hilton (Paris doesn't annoy me, since I think she has a real sense of humour) and the Kardashians and Lindsay Lohan (whom I like in any capacity other than her tormented tabloid persona).

Much as I have loved to watch America's Next Top Model, despite the shame of it, I have not seen the last two seasons beyond one to four episodes, and even the lure of André Leon Talley (who is also on Twitter) did not cure my thorough disenchantment, and I am following neither OfficialALT nor Tyra Banks. But I am following Toccara Jones, a third-season contestant who had an understated manner subtly concealing a vast aplomb, and who had a spread in Italian Vogue's (*sigh* ) "black" issue.

Apart from that, the humanitarian organizations and NGOs which I follow include UNHCR and UNICEF and NAACP, and it feels jolting but very good (though of course I haven't lifted a finger to help anybody yet) to be aware of what is happening in the world at large again. Then, as a cultural calendar, I follow museums, musicians, symphonies and magazines.

I'm relaxing my death grip on Anglosaxonia and specifically American culture a little, but frankly Twitter seems far more developed on that continent and the scepter'd isle than in Germany and Europe on the whole. So while I can heartily recommend Twitter feeds for continental museums like the Prado and Rijksmuseum, I have limited my German followings to Tip magazine.

Anyway, I've enjoyed myself hugely so far, though trawling through the lists of people whom famous interesting people are following in order to find more famous interesting people to follow one's self can be not only an odd (and seemingly hoity-toity) thing to do but also a major pain. Fortunately I already know what hashtags, etc., are and how they work, and have no trouble on that count.

P.S.: One must be aware, of course, of imperfections like spam Twitter accounts and stolen identities. At least the stolen identities can be highly amusing and essentially benign, like "Mrs. Stephen Fry," whose bewigg'd daguerreotype already hints that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

A State of Rudeness

Whether it's interesting or not is (almost) impossible for me to say, but I feel like a ramble about the research I've been doing for the French Revolution story. I still don't anticipate writing the story itself for years. In my view literature, and art itself, are most worthwhile when they are the thoughts and experiences and knowledge of years, encoded (in a way) by the author or painter or musician, and then left to the reader or spectator or listener to decode over years with the help of his own thoughts, experiences, and knowledge. So, also because I like a finely wrought piece of work for the superficial immediate enjoyment of it, and out of undistilled curiosity, I am taking pains to build up a very thorough understanding of the state of France before and during the Revolution and possibly up to the exile of Napoleon to the island of Elba.

A priority is to understand where the revolutionaries were coming from. The more I learn [largely, I admit, from Wikipedia] the clearer it is that they fell into very diverse factions — the apparently bloodthirsty hébertistes, Montagnards, Jacobins; sympathetic clergy and aristocrats; ambitious and resentful minor aristocrats and lawyers and so on —and that certain ideas of the revolutionaries regarding the rights of man and the injustice of the tax system and so on were actually quite in vogue in higher circles. Honestly I think that it was the ambition and class resentment from those who were or felt snubbed by the upper class which had far more to do with setting the events of the Revolution in motion than the oppressed peasantry. In Brittany this seems to be even more the case, where the king was respected as a very distant entity, the Catholic church was strongly engrained in the fabric of society, and taxes like the gabelle (salt tax) were not as harsh thanks to the late accession of the province to France and I think to the favourable terms wrung out by Anne de Bretagne.

Personally I am skeptical as to the degree to which the droit du seigneur was exercised — it appears to be a propagandistic gimmick, like the much-touted "bra burning" of the 1960s and 70s which never happened once — and I think I read that the corvée, or mandatory labour exacted of peasants for the building of roads and other infrastructure, was essentially gone (at least in Brittany?) by 1789. But it is clear that the tax system was ridiculous and injust. First of all, that it was weighted so that the great majority of the burden fell on the poor. Secondly, that it was gathered by private contractors who apparently had free rein in exacting higher sums than the royal treasury would ever demand or receive. Thirdly that the taxes were so complicated; besides the gabelle there was the capitation (head tax), the vingtième (property tax), the octroi (I think the English term is market tax; it was levied of peasants entering cities to sell their produce), and the taille (church tithe), to name four examples. When this joke was rendered utterly humourless by bad weather, crop failure, and the shortage of bread and other staples, of course the fat was in the fire.

The monarchy itself was bankrupt thanks to decades (or centuries, depending on how one sees it) of warfare whether direct or indirect as in the case of America's War of Independence, Louis XV had squandered the prestige of the throne through his reckless spending and menagerie of mistresses and presumably his disenchanting descent into bawdy old age, and Louis XVI was an ineffectual figure whose questionable advisors quite overshadowed him on policy questions. In the course of the Enlightenment the superstition which may have propped up the construct of divinely appointed kings was eroded, new ideas arose on points of law and governance and the social hierarchy, and the staunchly successful Glorious Revolution (1688) in England and even the very fledgling American republic which the French king had supported pointed the way to a different course. Besides the system of buying positions in government invited nepotism, laziness, and a continuing or even expanding gap between the powerless have-nots and the powerful haves.

Anyway I imagine that drafting a virgin government in one's mind as the government one grew up and possibly suffered under edged closer and closer to obsolescence must have inspired feelings of considerable giddiness. (Kind of like when Obama succeeded Bush.) I am trying to follow the mental processes of those who did it back in the 1780s and later. So, aside from toiling through Rousseau, I want to read Montesquieu (I just found out about De l'esprit des lois and have downloaded it onto the computer to read at leisure) and other more contemporary or at least French philosophers, and go back to the Roman and Greek models of government as described in Plutarch's Lives and elsewhere.

Either way I have actually read documents on Gallica, the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in their entirety, and it's nice to have a goldmine of primary sources at my fingertips. Jacques Necker's history of the Revolution (which I have admittedly not read in its entirety by a longshot; but what I wrote about the causes of the Revolution above is largely informed by the book's opening chapters) is most approachable. Even though it's tied up with a tragic massacre in Avignon which prefigured the Terror in Paris, I enjoyed, too, a speech by the Abbé Mulot in rebuttal to a Sieur Rovère (a revolutionary who had apparently falsely masqueraded as a marquis), of which I copied out my favourite insults. He calls Rovère "one of those low intriguers who know the tortuous paths which lead to crime but not to the scaffold" ("bas intriguans qui connoissent les routes tortueuses qui conduisent au crime sans arriver à l'échafaud"), which strikes me as a truly lovely turn of phrase. Later, and less imaginatively, he exhorts Rovère to "Blush, then, once, sieur Rovère, for the impudence of your lies" ("Rougissez donc une fois, sieur Rovère, de l'impudence de vos mensonges."). Evidently what the church gained in Mulot, the eloquently hyperemoting tradition of lofty French tragedy lost.

[Disclaimer: the above translations from the French are obviously my own and likely inaccurate. And I hope the final remark does not sound unkind.]

Rousseau persists in being a pain in the neck. The quirky view which philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke had of man in a state of nature rather amuses me — though if I had ever taken the pains to slog through the Leviathan instead of knowing of it through pleasant, civil, and short references this may not be the case — because it lines up so funnily with modern conceptions of prehistoric man. And because it's nonsense and at the same time a weird instinctive understanding of a scientific phenomenon, like the idea of the atom which certain ancient Greeks had formed millennia before Niels Bohr, or John Dalton, for that matter. [N.B.: We learned about Dalton in school, which is to say briefly and long ago, and if he did help determine our modern understanding of atoms it's purely a fluke that I vaguely remembered.]

But! I object to being called upon to glamourize the existence of Neanderthal man and to pretending that living In The Bosom of Nature is a beautiful experience. The tableau of Man in a State of Nature blissfully grazing on a fruitful and readily accessible supply of acorns is possibly the biggest tosh I've ever read. There have been much more entertaining and convincing accounts of the Pays de Cocagne or Schlaraffenland. Besides, now that anthropology is an established field of study Rousseau's ideas on the subject are just so blatantly invalid. Besides Rousseau's ideas, though I wouldn't call them fascist because the underlying airy-fairy touchyfeelyness is so disparate, are morally repugnant and essentially eugenicist. The possession of a paper copy of the Discours sur l'origine, etc., would I think be worthwhile just so that I can fire it at the wall as soon as I read, for instance, the part where he thinks that the Spartan practice of leaving "malformed" babies out in the cold to die is peachy. In the meantime I just play out violent fantasies of him being chased by a mammoth over the hummocky neolithic tundra or something.

Then his ideal of man in a state of nature is so hypocritically snobby, generalizing, callous, and totally brutish and depressing:

Alone, idle, and always surrounded with danger, savage man must be fond of sleep, and sleep lightly like other animals, who think but little, and may, in a manner, be said to sleep all the time they do not think: self-preservation being almost his only concern, he must exercise those faculties most, which are most serviceable in attacking and in defending, whether to subdue his prey, or to prevent his becoming that of other animals: those organs, on the contrary, which softness and sensuality can alone improve, must remain in a state of rudeness, utterly incompatible with all manner of delicacy; and as his senses are divided on this point, his touch and his taste must be extremely coarse and blunt; his sight, his hearing, and his smelling equally subtle: such is the animal state in general, and accordingly if we may believe travellers, it is that of most savage nations. We must not therefore be surprised, that the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope, distinguish with their naked eyes ships on the ocean, at as great a distance as the Dutch can discern them with their glasses; nor that the savages of America should have tracked the Spaniards with their noses, to as great a degree of exactness, as the best dogs could have done; nor that all these barbarous nations support nakedness without pain, use such large quantities of Piemento to give their food a relish, and drink like water the strongest liquors of Europe.

Source: A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind [Gutenberg]

&$%*@#! Anyway, I know that his thoughts were influential and that the Discours does capture archetypes and trains of reflection which remain and always have been relevant, but I just hate being confronted with declarative statements that are misguiding and untruthful, i.e. being lied to, especially when couched in repugnant pseudohumane sentiment.

Vicissitudes of a Night Owl on a Tuesday

'Tis the day before St. Patrick's, and ever since I woke up at two-ish it has not been precisely springlike, but the cloud ceiling and light quantity are discernibly higher than they were a month or so ago. Last night I stayed up until around 6:15, then shivered miserably to sleep because the featherbed blanket had unfolded itself and I didn't want to bother doubling it up again so that its virtue of insulation would take effect. ("'Tis the voice of the sluggard," etc.) What was really irritating was when the feet tingled and itched as they warmed up again.

During the night itself I had amused myself among other things with updating Firefox to the 3.6 version, then troubleshooting for what must have been a good hour as YouTube's videos refused to load. After downloading and re-downloading Adobe Flash Player 10, restarting Firefox and the entire computer, etc., it turns out that I just had to click on the dormant Shockwave Flash in the list of plug-ins.

In the future there might be a music blog post, but in the interim I'll just say that I've been concentrating on violin music and that yesterday I went on a cello spree, and what especially leapt out at me were Yehudi Menuhin's recording of Bach's Concerto in E major, David Oistrakh's of the Concerto in a minor, Jacques Thibaud's and Jacqueline du Pré's of Maria Theresa von Paradis's (or von Weber's or whoever's) siciliana, and Jacques Thibaud's of Tomaso Antonio Vitali's famous chaconne. Besides I am fond of Pau Casals's versions of Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei and Camille Saint-Saëns's Swan, and also bookmarked the first Bach cello suite (Mvt. 1-3), even though we do have CDs of them and I played them often whilst doing homework or slacking off during the first year of university.

Besides I've been on an art spree. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website has an art history timeline, named after one Heilbrunn, which provides thumbnails and actually useful informational blurbs of a large selection of the museum's holdings. They are classified by region, time period, etc., and what I just do is to click on a certain time period and go through all of them. During the night I went through the 20th and 21st century stuff, which was especially interesting to me because it feels peculiar to see what someone has decided are the important products of the times I've lived through.

The black-and-white photography sticks in my then befogged mind best, especially because I like what I've seen of Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Eugène Atget, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I was pleased when I recognized a photo of a cowboy leaning against a wastebasket on a New York street and smoking a cigarette in tight jeans, plaid shirt, belt, and a Stetson, because that one came up in a nytimes.com slideshow about an exhibition of Robert Franks's oeuvre.

Then there was fashion from the Costume Institute. I don't like flapper fashion very much, though as an aesthetic I can appreciate it as well as any other, because I like couture that celebrates curves, etc., rather than obscures them and because its limpishness is annoying. So Paul Poiret, whether his fashion is technically flapper or not, was not my cup of tea; neither was most of Coco Chanel's stuff, to which I perhaps shockingly prefer what Chanel turns out under Karl Lagerfeld in the present. On the other hand I thought that the Christian Dior frocks destroy the argument that fuller figures were in vogue in the day of Marilyn Monroe, etc., because the cuts and sizes suggest corsets and diets and a slender Grace Kelly rather than steak and muscles and a subtly plump woman. But maybe the patrons really wanted something that tiny-waisted, or people were thinner back then in general.

I kind of liked the Balenciaga and Madeleine Vionnet, and with the Givenchy it was difficult to imagine Audrey Hepburn out of the dresses. Speaking of which I think the adulation accorded to that actress on the grounds of her style is irritating. When people like Victoria Beckham tamely imitate it I'm disgruntled. Frankly I would not weep if I never heard of Breakfast at Tiffany's or saw the dumb cigarette-in-holder/pearls/sunshades photo again. And the "little black dress" is an obnoxious cliché; to quote and paraphrase Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, if the construction of that phrase could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity. The reason I like Audrey Hepburn is admittedly because she is beautiful but also because of her grace and interesting life and, above all, sensibility.

After that I went through the 1400-1600 A.D. period and was surprised to find that I didn't like the offerings from that time very much. Then I roamed through Wikimedia Commons in search of an illustration for an incipient Lighthouse blog post on Jane Austen's Persuasion. One problem is that I have an ideal portrait of Anne Elliot before my mind's eye, with gentle and intelligent eyes in a slender oval face, but I can't think of an actress or lady in a painting/lithograph/whatever who embodies that. Besides portraits of the time are often commissioned, and then they're of apparently self-important or blowzy or self-dramatizing (two words: Emma Hamilton, against whom I've had one of my one-sided feuds for years) women who are utterly unsuited. But I did come across portraits of well-known figures like the actor David Garrick, whom I've often heard about but never expected to see almost made alive again in a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds(?), and then hit the motherlode and was forced to reevaluate my stance on Caspar David Friedrich when I stumbled on the category of "Romantic paintings."

But what I'm mainly looking for is an illustration for a blog post about John Keats's "Pot of Basil," which I've been wrestling with for weeks and probably needs to be written afresh. Two or three Pre-Raphaelites had a field day with the poem, but I am not especially fond of the Pre-Raphaelites, since I think that their hyperstylized, immaturely moody saccharineness shows a weakspined unwillingness to cross lances with reality much like that of science fiction writers who, rather than sensibly learn to get along with other people as they grow older, prefer to premise their books on the nearly summary extinction of humanity.

Anyway, having been a total snob and trodden on many a foot, I'll just mention that J. presided over a batch of homemade marshmallows again, and we've eaten lots of them on their own and as a creamy melting mass on a cup of hot chocolate. J. uses beetroot syrup (Zuckerrübensirup) instead of corn syrup, so the marshmallows have a faint brown tinge and a nice distinctive flavour. Another option is to toast the marshmallows at our coal stoves, which works quite well as long as the coals are burning red and cleanly and not passively emitting gasolinish fumes.

A Recipe for a Non-Surprise

With a grand effort I could probably find something intelligent to talk about, but in its absence I might as well share the latest evolution of a recipe for "pudding surprise." (I pronounce the "surprise" with a pseudo-French accent but that is, of course, purely an affectation.)

First of all I should own a debt to Aunt N., who used to make pudding surprise for us children when we came over every Saturday back in the early '90s. The constant in her recipe was the pudding and the sherry-soaked biscuit at the very bottom, generously soaked, but I think she enriched it with sliced bananas and other improvised ingredients too.

Since I don't know exactly what she did, and other ingredients are at hand here in Germany, I've turned the recipe into something like this. (The optional steps are in italics.)

1 package ladyfinger biscuits
1 jar cherries (Sauerkirschen/Schattenmorellen)
4 pkg. vanilla or chocolate pudding
+ ingredients listed on package (milk, sugar)
1 pkg vanilla sugar, or regular sugar
sherry
bittersweet chocolate or cocoa powder or both

Prepare the pudding as described in the instructions on the package; you could add a teaspoon or two of cocoa powder to the recipe. Since the milk takes so long to heat the rest of the pudding surprise can be prepared in the meantime.

First, drain the cherries, reserving the juice.

Then, neatly lay out as many ladyfinger biscuits as desired on the bottom of a large dish (I prefer a glass bowl); because of the dimensions of our bowl I put in two layers and there are always some left over.

Carefully pour over the sherry enough to wetten the entire surface of the biscuits, and after that add as much and let as much splash down into the bottom of the bowl as you like. (To prevent the alcohol from evaporating too much, I put a large plate over the bowl, but I doubt this makes a difference.)

Then I spread all of the drained cherries over the biscuits, and pour over enough of the juice to ensure that the biscuits soak well.

After that I sugar the cherries to concentrate the flavour; if you have a package of vanilla sugar you might as well use up the whole thing, otherwise I refer the question of quantity to the individual cook's excellent judgment.

When the pudding is finished, I pour it over the biscuits and cherries. The last time I made it I stopped part-way through, laid down another layer of ladyfinger biscuits, and then poured on the rest, but this is of course entirely optional. The biscuits are less dense than the pudding so they eventually rise to the top like a baleen whale surfacing from the briny deep, unless ingeniously soaked or weighed down for instance by cherries, but last time I didn't care.

Lastly I chop the chocolate (what I did last time is to leave it in the plastic packaging and vigorously whack it crosswise with the back of a heavy carving knife so that it fractured into little pieces, before taking it out) or spoon the cocoa powder into a sieve, or both, and distribute it lightly but evenly over the pudding. This is a trick to prevent a tough skin from forming; it isn't 100% effective but it's still helpful.

I like to eat and serve it hot.

The End.

The Evening of the Little Gold Man

After spending the night before at the computer, then going to sleep in the late morning, I woke up just as the customarily painfully embarrassing Academy Awards red carpet interviews of the Pro7 channel ended. Then Papa and Mama gradually returned to the corner room and Gi. finished preparing a generous quantity of popcorn. On the television the coverage switched to its American counterpart, with the ex-supermodel Kathy Ireland (whose greyish dress was taller than most of the ambient humanity), an entertainment writer named Jess Cagle, and Sherri Shepherd of the talkshow The View. The actors who ventured within reach of their professional claws obligingly reeled off the clichés about being excited and feeling honoured "to be here" and wanting to enjoy each moment as it comes, and succeeded in pretending as if they feel happy when total strangers are clamouring for their attention like badly raised two-year-olds, and in this case demanding gracious responses to a shopworn set of officious questions. ("Who are you wearing?" = *groan*.)

Then the Academy Awards began as the nominees for best actor and actress took to the stage and stood there in the circus ring sight of the spotlights and cameras and auditorium hoi polloi. Once they had flocked back into their seats in the privileged front ring, Neil Patrick Harris emerged back centre stage and began a musical number most of whose lyrics I couldn't distinguish, whilst the ostrich feathers and (figurative) monkey suits of multitudinous dancers hearkened back to Old Hollywood showbusiness glamour. Then we were introduced to the hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, who dutifully made reasonably polite and amusing jokes about or around the different acting nominees. They came across as relaxed and likeable, in my view, and it was nice not to have to wince either at a seriously off-colour or cruel joke, or at excessive attempts at ingratiating themselves with the audience.

The first pair of awards went to the best supporting actor and best supporting actress. Christoph Waltz won the first for Inglourious Basterds, and possibly his visible discomfort beforehand had sprung from the fact that being broadcast in the guise of a Nazi on a gigantic film screen is not anyone's idea of a shining moment. His speech was a jewel of succinctness and finely worked metaphor, and it wrapped up before the procrustean 45-second time limit so the orchestra music did not ignominiously cut him short. Mo'Nique, white flowers adorning her hair in hommage to her distant predecessor Hattie McDaniel, then won the best supporting actress award for playing a monstrous mother in Precious; this was equally expected. After her acceptance speech the cameras cut to Samuel L. Jackson, presumably to capture the "moved African-American" reaction, which he duly noted and rewarded with a mocking grimace into the camera. (Upon which my high opinion of him climbed another amused notch.)

After that came the techy awards, like screenplay and film editing and sound, and the awards for the little and foreign films. Avatar and The Hurt Locker divided the lion's share between them. I was happy whenever the latter won because of my one-sided feud against James Cameron and against Avatar. (Presumably I will call off said feud in due course, as has happened in the past with such entities as Tom Cruise and Richard Gere, but it is enjoyable to provisionally dislike people I've never met and films I've never seen.) The film's pop culture impact is obvious, but that doesn't prevent me from giggling when people describe it as "Pocahontas acted out by Smurfs."

Intermittently there was a tribute to John Hughes, a director who made films about teenagers in the 80s/90s and of whose oeuvre I have seen The Breakfast Club and Home Alone, whilst it is practically impossible to avoid hearing about Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Pretty in Pink. There was also a montage in honour of the horror film, where every few seconds one of us would remark, more or less, "That's not a horror film. That's more of a thriller." (Like Jaws and Psycho.) I looked away for most of the time since the horror genre is not at all my cup of tea. There was also a resumé of honorary awards that were presented in a different ceremony, and one of the recipients was Lauren Bacall. The sight of her elegantly accepting the standing ovation that came the way of her and a fellow honoree was uplifting (especially since The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not and Murder on the Orient Express (1974) are much beloved in this household), even if the momentary doubt if many younger actresses are in her league was not so much so. As for the Na'vi skit that introduced the best makeup category, it went on too long in my view.

Finally we arrived at the mighty four awards for best actor, best actress, best director, and best film. Five actors assembled on the stage to pronounce a laudatio (as these things are called in Germany) for each best actor nominee: Michelle Pfeiffer for Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore for Colin Firth, Vera Farmiga for George Clooney, Colin Farrell for Jeremy Renner, and Tim Robbins for Morgan Freeman. It was terribly awkward at moments, for example when Vera Farmiga harped on Clooney's looks. But I liked the two last tributes, though I suspected that despite the film they both acted in Renner and Farrell (whom I rather like as far as his personality is discernible) don't know each other sufficiently to give the requisite profound insights into each other's artistic and personal merits. (Which was also a problem with Julianne Moore and Colin Firth.) Jeff Bridges won, of course, and it was amusing when this exponent of a showbiz family took the stage like a seasoned denizen of the West and cheerfully drawled unaffected thanks to all the relevant parties, interspersed with celebratory whoops and languid ", . . . maaan"s.

The formula was repeated with Michael Sheen speaking for Helen Mirren, Peter Sarsgaard for Carey Mulligan, Forest Whitaker for Sandra Bullock, Oprah for Gabourey Sidibe, and Stanley Tucci for Meryl Streep. I didn't recognize Forest Whitaker and was even more puzzled to find out that he had directed one of Sandra Bullock's romantic comedies, Hope Floats. Either way I had no idea who was going to win. Gabourey Sidibe or Carey Mulligan or Helen Mirren looked likeliest, since from what I've read Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child is an enjoyable gig rather than an impassioned dramatic role, and Sandra Bullock's films are popular but have neither artistic pretensions nor great range.

But . . . Sandra Bullock won, and her speech was so characteristically warm and normal and funny that my surprise that she was considered good enough even to be nominated was forgotten. In any case the films she has been in are consistently watchable — I've watched a lot of them, from Miss Congeniality through Two Weeks' Notice to The Net — though The Proposal and All About Steve sound borderline. (She won a Razzie award for All About Steve, also for "worst screen couple" with Bradley Cooper, which reverse accolade she gracefully accepted in a speech available, if only sporadically audible, on YouTube.) But I haven't seen her performance in The Blind Side and had only assumed based on one or two reviews that the film on the whole is nothing special. It was nice, too, that the family on whose experiences the film is based were in the audience and that she gave them a satisfying "shout out."

At last the evening ended as Kathryn Bigelow was declared Best Director and The Hurt Locker was crowned as Best Film with tremendous speed. Needless to say I was muchly pleased (and from the critics' film reviews I reread post facto the award was also pretty well deserved). So the whole thing did take about four hours but it was time well spent, and even if it hadn't been, all's well that ends well!

The Astronomer

Undeterred by the paucity of material, I will probably write a new blog post later today. But for now here is the fruit of my latest poetic mood, in second draft form. The rhythm and rhyming are incidental, the excess conjunctions will have to be weeded out later, and I had two philosophical stanzas towards the end which need to be replaced or totally discarded eventually and have therefore been left out here. What can't be changed is that the whole poem is a cliché. The scene is an indeterminate Italian town roughly during the Renaissance and the protagonist is (obviously) Galileoesque.

* * *

Spirally he treads the steps
between the quadrant of the stony walls
where the torches’ twisted circle
flickers in the gusting evening wind.

The streets are dappled by the moon
and here and there an estranged sheen
points to eave or weathercock
or the shining fissure of glassed window.

The rim of hills lies weighty
and the church’s domes rise firm
as beyond the sea the seeping sun
leaves behind its trace of green.

The noise of day has ceased to be
though the wavering drone of revelry
may fill the taverns and trickle into streets
and furtive carts may straggle by.

So the hollow suffering of the wind
the creak and groan of distant door
and the muffled shuffle-shuffle
of his slippers are the only sounds he hears.

He rises in the tightwalled tower
with much less ease than long before,
the cobwebbed corners not alone
in bearing marks of bygone years.

But at the top the hobbit’s door
opens to a familiar scene
of crabbed table, chair, and bookshelf
pens and ink and telescope.

Its darkness yields to candlelight,
the startled glimmer of the mice’s eyes
as they abandon leather tomes
and seek a different stuff to nibble.

With disregard he sets his candle
close beside the telescope
and pats the coppery sheath, its dents,
and lifts his sleeve to wipe the lens.

He sets ajar another casement
snaking moonlight passes in
and with it breezes coolly ruffle
the parchment and the plumy quill.

What forces stir the light and wind,
which might controls the roaming stars,
what forces bring their lustre near
and bend the glass to such far sight?

[. . .]

He ponders but he cannot know.
For now he holds himself content
to watch the passing of the stars,
to find the laws which govern them,

To ask the questions, and to wait
until the end, to hear the truth.

(Written Feb. 22, 2010)

Bryant Park, Silver Bears, and Bach

Today I woke up, reluctantly but effectively, after 10 a.m. Everyone was out of the house so I read an online book, dabbled at the blog post, and checked my e-mail and Facebook account. Regarding Facebook I had an internal debate one or two days ago whether to request people to be friends, but finally decided against it because I want to be completely sure that whoever stays in contact with me does so out of their own free will and not on humanitarian grounds.

Besides I've been visiting the Guardian and New York Times websites religiously and have even begun reading science articles as well as the arts and style and travel ones. During New York Fashion Week I flipped through two or three days' worth of slideshows; fur and grey, Suzie Bird and Chriselle Stubbs and Chantal Stafford-Abbott are apparently the big new trends. Of course I keep an eye out for a designer whom I especially like, but despite a leaning toward Donna Karan (to my surprise I also liked DKNY this season) and Carolina Herrera and even Marchesa despite its flaunting opulence, there is no one whom I'd pinpoint as a favourite. Now it's London Fashion Week, but my enthusiasm has ebbed.

Since the Olympics are being held in Vancouver and Whistler, and Vancouver is (despite the fact that I don't know it well and mostly because of my experience studying at UBC) officially one of my favourite places on earth, I should feel obliged to follow them faithfully. But I have altogether been steering clear of reading about or watching them. As for the Canadian angle, during school I was exposed to tonnes of patriotism, and didn't like it then and don't like it now. I can remember about Acadia and Louis Riel and the War Measures Act, recite the provinces and territories with their capital cities, speak in both official languages, name the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, and pick out Hollywood celebrities who were born north of the border; and at home when we're drinking a glass of wine or liqueur we toast the Queen from time to time; but that's about as far as I'm willing to go. One of the things that relieved me about moving to Berlin is that here nobody bothers to pretend that one country is superior to another, or agonizes about Our Place in the World.

The Berlinale is closer to home; we watched the closing ceremony on television, and Mama and Uncle Pu (who visited today) are better informed about it, but I missed the rest of it. I like the presentation of awards at the end of the festival. Other German award ceremonies like the Bambi or Golden Camera are stilted and longwinded and terribly awkward compared to the greased professionalism of the Oscars and Emmys, etc., besides which it seems as if the American actors/singers/etc. who receive prizes (Meg Ryan, Britney Spears, etc.) are selected by an undiscriminating 13-year-old who has lived in a cave on the moon for the past decade. But the closing ceremony of the Berlinale is not so pompous or heavy, I think also because the festival director Dieter Kosslick is pretty unpretentious, and it is more serious and international. One would have to wait a long time to hear Quechua, Romanian or Cantonese spoken at the Oscars, and it's nice when the audience isn't a begowned and bejewelled recreation of Fifth Avenue.

Anyway, I had a long piano session in the afternoon. There was plenty of Bach — Partita No. 4 and the Concerto in d minor in their entirety, and the toccata of Partita No. 6 — and Beethoven — last movement of the Tempest Sonata, the whole of the Sonata appassionata, and Mvts. 1 and 3 of the Moonlight Sonata —, but also Mozart's Concerto in G major, Händel's suite with the variations on the "Harmonious Blacksmith" (minus the part where the page is missing), Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3, Chopin waltzes Op. 64 No. 1 (i.e. Minute Waltz) and 2, Enrique Granados's Spanish Dance No. 6, and Schubert's impromptus Op. posth. 142 No. 2 and 3.

The Chopin and thornier Beethoven involved a good deal of fudged notes, but I've made a breakthrough on the Händel, the Schubert was less obscure and rushed than ordinary, and the Mozart was from time to time pleasingly friendly. Leaving Beethoven's later sonatas for months and months, and turning to other music, has resulted in a thoroughly beneficial, objective distance, though I realize that even now I haven't begun to plumb their possibilities. But what I'd really love to do at present is to improve my grasp of Bach, whom I regard as a devoted mountaineer might regard a cordillera of great dimensions and numerous challenges, which it requires much time and strength and perseverance to conquer, and even once conquered still hides unexpected facets, but which finally leaves one profoundly satisfied.

Meditations Before Spring

The first cracks in the ice of winter have appeared, like sunshine and, yesterday, rain instead of snow. A blue hyacinth on our windowsill has been in flower for over a week now, and though the balcony-box looks pitiful, the heather and much flattened pansy leaves survived the snow cover.

After much soul-searching I've decided to preserve the status quo as far as working or studying are concerned, until a fitting job turns up (the daily consultation of job listings is of course being maintained). Eventually I'll panic about my bank account again, but it'll be good for ca. 9 months as long as Harpagon, Silas Marner, and Ebenezer Scrooge remain my fiscal mentors. Besides, the longer the job search continues the happier I am about not contributing to the saturation of the job market until it's absolutely necessary. Which isn't very happy at all, but then altruism and logic have their limits.

For multitudinous reasons which, again, I don't care to enumerate, I am strongly against returning to university at present. I'd much prefer to study abroad, so that the experience is well-rounded and more interesting, but that costs money. Though I began filling out an online application to transfer to Columbia University weeks ago anyway, my conscience wasn't at ease about it. I don't know precisely why and on the surface of things it seems perfectly fine to give the opportunity my best shot, but the last time such a strong unease manifested itself I disregarded it and consequently went through a very bad patch. So I've bowed to the French mathematician's dictum that "The heart has reasons which reason cannot know." Besides it was an ambitious plan and ambition is in my view a worrisome motivation.

I've come to think it is good to repose upon myself, as the French phrase goes — to remain in touch as much as possible with who I am; and to gradually and naturally find a path which can best unfold any qualities that are peculiar to me. I don't like competing with others, don't much care for a large income, have no desire for a prominent career, and have already learned that the approval of others is a fickle good and therefore not a North Star towards which one can safely orientate one's self. Of course I daydream about travelling and working in New York, Australia, Scotland, or Texas, etc., and I believe the wish for adventure and escape to be neither peculiar nor wrong, but it's more important to come to terms with quotidian reality and to make the most of such experiences when they come.

If it makes sense, I also want to slow down and do things like music and writing and learning history very thoughtfully and painstakingly over a long period of time. Firstly, surface knowledge or ability is not satisfying on a deeper level and in the long term, and as amusing as humbugging is I'd rather have substance to back it up; besides I want to have an original and consistent way of doing things. Secondly, I like the idea of emulating Sir Humphry Davy or Immanuel Kant or John Milton in becoming singlemindedly absorbed in whatever field it is that interests me and pursuing it at depth and in peace, and then coming up with something revolutionary and profound when I'm older. I'm not the best pupil and though school was a good catalyst I think I've learned much more outside of it; in the end if I'm going anywhere it has to be under my own steam.

Lastly, I've been determined since the age of sixteen (or thereabouts) to build up a stock of strength of character, knowledge, interests, etc., and become as self-sufficient as possible. For one thing, when I live alone or am homebound I don't want to be bored or feel that life is purposeless; I have found it impossible to rely on others, except in limited cases, nor do I want the embarrassment of falling apart in public; and finally, when and if I marry and have children I want to be able to transmit resilience and inspiration and fun rather than drain it. It reminds me of a Bible passage, "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things." We learned this quotation in my Ancient Greek course; I remember it five years later because I found it quite touching. The good/evil thing is not so much what interests me about it, but rather the idea of the soul as a repository of treasures.

Abrupt Endings

So much for that. The catering company lady who interviewed me on Friday has telephoned to inform me that she had talked with my supervisor and that it was decided not to hire me. She offered to mail back my application papers, which offer I accepted, and asked me to give back the company's shirt through Mama. It was a shock. I don't understand if I fell short somehow or if I'm just not what they're looking for (the latter, probably, since I didn't do badly yesterday). Cancelling a tentative work contract after a single day is not flattering. But if they didn't mean to employ me anyway it was good of them to drop me before I become more invested in the work. And it is one step nearer towards the job I actually end up doing.

On the other hand I don't apply for jobs for fun — the application process itself is, speaking from personal experience, less fun than a root canal and much longer — or without being convinced that I could and would do it competently to well. Maybe I don't seem desperate enough for work; but I have too much pride to beg or to toady to people, and it's unfair to pressure people to hire me instead of more qualified and suitable (and, possibly, poor) candidates out of pity. It's not an entirely practical attitude, but it leaves me a sustaining scrap of dignity.

One Small Step for Man

[Forgiveness, please, if this goes into too much detail.]

This morning I went to my first day of work at the catering company. It isn't real work yet, but a three-day training and trial period. Unluckily I arrived after 11 a.m., because while I reached the school in time it was difficult to find a proper entrance. After going to the office, I was directed to the kitchen and lunch room. There my training supervisor met me, guided me into a nice little room to change out of my outdoor shoes into my indoor ones, and out of my outdoor shirt into my cafeteria uniform shirt, and to put my things in a locker. (What I must also have along is the Rote Karte.) Besides I washed my hands, of course. It was snowing a trifle outside and the grassy areas and sidewalks were still covered. And there was still time before the food was to be served.

Then I learned the simpler tasks. Firstly we lifted the stainless steel, lidded bins out of the grey-blue styrofoam boxes, and checked the slip-tags to see that the right quantity of food had been delivered in them. (If it had been delivered to the wrong school, or there had been insufficient portions, we would have phoned the number given on the slips to correct the mistake.) Out in the lunch room a container each of tea and water, glasses, and cutlery had already been set up, and in the kitchen stacks of dishes with neat blue-and-white tea towels draped over them were awaiting use. At the window from which the food is served, there is a bain-marie, like a steel sink with at most an inch of water on the bottom, and my supervisor had switched on the heating underneath. Into this bain-marie we lowered the bins. Then, for the sake of food safety, we measured the temperature of one bin of each of the different foodstuffs with a thermometer much like the kind one uses at home for amateur medical purposes, and after the number stopped rising recorded it in a chart.

Eventually the business of serving food itself began. Since it's an elementary school, the children are for the most part friendly little characters, and as I ladled out tomato sauce and, every now and then rice with chickpea curry or the pasta with which the tomato sauce goes, I liked catching glimpses of their personalities. A couple said "danke," quite charmingly, and I was careful to recognize their effort to be polite by replying "bitte." As they grow older they'll probably find that most people aren't polite, besides which it's a bit presumptuous for me to dabble in pedagogy, but in the words of a certain Englishman, "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

In the meantime I had to keep in mind that the littler ones receive more modest portions than the larger ones, and that when they ask for a second helping (which many did, because they love the noodles), this helping is slightly smaller; besides one must pay attention whether they want sauce, a little sauce, a dab of sauce to taste, or no sauce at all. For reasons of keeping demand within the limits of supply, neither third servings nor taking a portion of rice as well as of noodles are permitted. The supervisor already knew the preferences of the children and therefore had ordered a much larger proportion of noodles than rice; besides she handed out the apples to those children who weren't enrolled in day care and who wouldn't therefore be receiving them later. Surprisingly enough the children were quite enthusiastic about the apples, which did possess a pleasant rosy tinge; only one handed his back to me, and another wanted to exchange his because it was a little gnarled.

A third lady was busy in the dishwashing room, spraying off trays of dishes with a highly pressurized hose, and then setting it under the hob of a compact but impressive washing machine. The dirty dishes came in on trays set in wagons, and sometimes the children helped by pushing them into the kitchen, under the watchful eye of the lady so that they didn't roam loose. Out in the lunchroom the teachers wiped off the tables as their classes left. And the remaining business of cleaning was spared me, as I was sent off home right after the very last children had received at least their first portion.

So I'm a little anxious about the next two days, especially because I can be absentminded and forget things, and because when I'm under pressure instructions to me can go in one ear and out the other. But it seemed that today the only signs of abject stupidity were, firstly, not catching the name of my supervisor and, secondly, writing down my phone number incorrectly. Given the fact that I've thought of Proper Work with the same awed trepidation with which Frodo Baggins might have regarded the borders of Mordor, the last thing I expected was to have fun; I did, a lot.

***

It's also Papa's birthday!