Happy Friday Recital Day!

Viola up.

Here's hoping for a great night. Eli (the pianist) and I feel ready. We had an absolutely terrible time in class on Wednesday. I chalk it up to me being sick & him worrying about his Oral Exams, which were just an hour after class.

The next day our rehearsal was like two different people. People who get along and actually listen to one another. People who want to hear what the viola is doing over the ridiculously loud & busy piano part. Don't worry, it's not like Eli hasn't heard this stuff before. He's a Rumanian Israeli; he can deal. I am so jealous that he's DONE! Dr. Eli.

I love Sally (viola prof), I like Madison, I like our house. I like playing recitals. {TONIGHT, 6pm, THE UNITARIAN PLACE} I don't like thinking about these final hoops to jump- but I know I'm being a wussy.

What I really want is to know that I'll get a job I like in the part of the country I want, and that this piece of very expensive wallpaper will have been worth it. If they can guarantee that, then I can handle studying the minute details of obscure & crappy composers (Meyerbeer, anyone?).

"Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future."
— Kathleen Norris

"How much time, creative energy, and emotion do we expend resisting change because we assume growth must always be painful? Much personal growth is uncomfortable, but it's worse to thwart the ascent of your authenticity."
— Sarah Ban Breathnach


"If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change."
— Miles Davis

Fruitcrackers

If you had a hundred thousand dollars, what would you do with it? Buy two people yuppie educations? One in something really smart & practical... oh.. say... law. And the other in something obscure and fruity...how about viola performance!

Crazy, right? Fruitcrackers.

But how blessed are we? To get to even make this choice... if decisions make you a tough I expect to come out of the next few years positively buff.

By the way, some portion of that money should obviously go to fun clothes and shoes for the performer, right?? Especially if she gets them at Goodwill and/or the bargain racks and the mother ship itself (AKA tj maxx).

I tried the whole little dress over jeans look today. A full ten years after I remember thinking people looked demented in Tokyo wearing that. Tastes change, right? But I hereby do solemnly swear to never ever ever like Hello Kitty.

Can I get an Amen?

Decisions, decisions

How do you make them?

Here's a cool quote I found online at the site for the Mars Hill Graduate School. (Rachael's mama went there)

"It's interesting that we are designed unable to see our own face. We need others to look upon us and interact with us in order to grow in both wisdom and maturity. The Mars Hill Graduate School counseling degree is about learning to read the human soul. We read not to define the other, but instead to interact with the other with the hope of redemption for our neighbor and for ourselves. [Our school] is about the work of understanding the power of relationship to bless, disrupt, convict, and create the arena for God's Spirit to bring freedom and reconciliation."
-Kirk Webb, Counseling Chair

I was thinking about this because it was just so nice to hang with Tiffany (& Betsy & Chloe, too!) this morning. There are certain people who show you other cool ways to think / live that you could see yourself stretching to, you know what I mean? Some people you meet and you just know you're not "like" them, even if you love the way they are. Then there are folks who reflect enough of what you're like but add enough of the exotic/different that it expands you a little, too.

As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend …. As in water face reflects face, so a man's heart reveals the man. Proverbs 27:17, 19

Sheesh- is it almost Thursday already??

It's one of those weeks that flits past at an angle, almost by itself.

I turned in a 37 page paper this week, entitled, "Starting a Music Festival: an Annotated Interview with Stephanie Jutt". It felt like the last day of school in third grade. Sooooo happy.

The best part of today was the walk we took after rehearsal at church tonight. I love the feeling of my hand in J's when mine's a little chilly and his is soft & warm(which is always).

Simon helped clean the floors today- we've decided Pine Sol smells like camping. If you're camping where there are latrines.

Stuck bunnies...

stuck bunnies
Here's our little refugee stuck bunnies. Jonathan found them this afternoon mowing- they had somehow jumped into the window well and couldn't get out. We left them alone for a bit, then took their pictures without their permission, lifted them out, (then removed one from the garage) and watched them run into various spots.

Honestly, and don't nobody throw nothin, I was tempted to adopt the little one (in the back in this pic), but then I looked online and it turns out it's a bad idea. Wild rabbits will actually struggle so hard they'll break their backs to get away from people as they get older.

Plus, I had a rabbit once and it was a bad deal. He peed on my lap and thought all fingers were carrots. Not good.
Here's gardening project number one: and it's our front yard. It's been a wreck all winter (one great thing about snow) and now I'm feeling like we're the "bad" house on the block.


And here, for all to see, is our backyard garden. Our future backyard garden. The raspberries made it!! There are pansies waiting to go in the box around the edge. Next come tomatoes, lettuce, and peas. Do you know how hard it is to get pieces of wood to line up? and then to pound nails in? doh. Gotta get some of those plate-thingies that will connect two pieces of lumber in a row.


Here's J's gardening face:

SPRING: "the body is a sacred garment"

There are birds out, and kids and flowers, and the grass is GREEEEEN and it smells lovely. I can open the sun roof when I'm driving and the car is HOT when I come back to it. Halleluja! And I mean it- it's helped my outlook so much.

I've worn my wedding shoes two days in a row, and I think they will be the first pair I even buy twice.

The body is a sacred garment.
Martha Graham 1893-1991

This is the Martha for whom Aaron Copland wrote Appalachian Spring. We're playing it tonight in the Chamber Orchestra and it's one of my favorites. It's reminding me of youth symphony in Fairbanks with Dr. Duff.

This one's for you, Dad.  

h h h h c

holy holy holy 


holy cow 

These are in Brandon, Wisconsin.
Population: 1 policeman, so go 25.
I do, even though it takes cruise control to keep it there.

Another view...

...here's how I felt after practicing Paganini yesterday. It got better, but I love this picture.

Batter up!

Midnight snack

Here's my new baby. Isn't it loooovely??

Yum.

flowbee nation

You just wait till I post the picture of Simon after I myself groomed him. You know how moms cut their kids' bangs until they're soooo short their little forheads look naked and scared?

Well, I sort of did that to his ears. He looks like a cavalier with lab ears now. We both nearly peed ourselves laughing at him tonight when we made it home. He flipped on his back in shame, wagging all the while.

So, here he is. Not too bad, right?


But wait... here's... the bad side.


...and here he is apparently wishing he had been born a frog, forever free from haircuts.

Things I've heard about...

Overheard today at the Pancake Cafe:
A boy of about 8 years was at a table near us fervently relating to his parents and most of the restaurant a tale of his day. He was speaking in that voice peculiar to young boys, so loud his voice was nearly straining, but casually; not with any agression or particular excitement. Almost as though he was reading to too big an audience. His inflection generally went up at the end of sentences, but not as much as, say, Californian gen-x chics do.
"So I was talking after church with Mrs. Felling and we were speaking in Spanish because she speaks Spanish and so I asked her how do you say I Love You and it's Te Amo and I told her I think that's a really good name for a dog."
I practically cried- marriage is making me a sap- and now I think we should get another dog and name it Te Amo.

Spring:
There were countless red-winged blackbirds trilling and cardinals whoopwhooopwhooopwhoop weeeeting today when we rode our bikes to town. And there was one spot on the trail, like so many other marshy spots we passed except this one was riotous with frogs. We decided they must have chosen that place over all the others for the schools. Or the taxes.

Resurrection:
We heard a foley artist interviewed on the radio the other day. They're the folks who squish watermelons and rattle things to make the sounds you hear in movies. He said that if you encounter something totally out of your experience you will most likely not register it at all. (That's why they like to use everyday objects for most of their sounds.) The unknowable becomes invisible to you, like pitches too high or low for your brain to interpret. They enter your ear, they even stimulate your hearing mechanism like perceiveable sounds, but your processing center doesn't know what to do with them. I think that's why it's hard to wrap your head around resurrection. (my head)

Further proof of Gillian Welch's lyrical prowess:
Oh the night came undone like a party dress
And fell at her feet in a beautiful mess
The smoke and the whiskey came home in her curls
And they crept through the dreams of the barroom girl