Guess who's back. Back again.

No really, you can all stop emailing, calling and texting my agent- I have returned to Blogger after a brief but unavoidable hiatus. I hate it when blogs I like do this- but in my case, despite the vast unmeasurable silence left behind I just had to go for a while.

We are home now for the indefinite future. I am doing two things.

1. Reminding the bratlet that he is now fully formed (34 weeks) and can come on out any time he likes. Also reminding him that that's my RIBCAGE he's trying to rearrange, if I could move it I would have done two months ago.

2. Christmas shopping. It's not that I'm all Martha Stewarting, it's just that we have to send 90% of our gifts away to folks this year, so it's do or die.

Since I'm not sure anyone on the male half of this family tree has ever or ever will read this, I'm going to jump right in and say it intimidates me to buy presents for them. We've decided on a big number as our Total Present Financial Output Limit, and I'm confortable sticking to that. It's just that they are a gift-card, gift-receipt group- eminantly practical but different than my experience thus far. They generally will KNOW how much we've spent on each of them.

Shopping for me has pretty much always been an exercise in getting the best or most elegant seeming thing for a bargain. I hope I'm not cheap- I like to buy stuff for people, but I rarely get ANYthing full price, and until now I never thought about including gift receipts. If I found a cool something or other that looked new and I knew you liked it- and I just happened to be standing in Goodwill at that moment, then that's what I'd wrap up and give you. If you were R---- and like antique kitchy crap like me, then it wouldn't even need to look new. You know who you are.

So that's my challenge right now- growing baby bits and spending money, yet finding ways to kvetch about it. Truthfully, I'm feeling fortunate about both.

Pregnant quotes.

Takemitsu was such a 60's kind of guy. He liked Buckminster Fuller (I like that name- repeated several times while trying to think of a synonym for "perform" it can become kind of funny), and especially the idea of human cultures coming together to create a "universal egg of humanity."

So since I'll be the USS Miriam when I'm delivering this lecture-recital, I included this quote from Takemitsu about the first time the NY Phil played his stuff:

"When you see the swollen stomach of a pregnant woman, it seems at once both very serious, of course, and yet somehow humorous. So perhaps it wasn't irresponsible of the New York Philharmonic members to burst into laughter at this birth."

The committee will either smile indulgently while inwardly rolling their eyes or just roll their eyes, right?

Inspiring?

Here's the photo that caused the dream that inspired the piece that became the mother of the other piece that is my thesis topic.
It's a Man Ray photo of the shaved head of Marcel Duchamp which Takemitsu saw before writing A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden. He thought it looked like one black bird leading a flock of white birds into a star-shaped garden. He was a little kooky about gardens. I hope someday I will be done writing this paper. Some...day....