"It never rains but it pours!"

Now Playing: "Wings of Song", by James Galway.

A couple of housekeeping notes: In case you didn't notice, I just put up two more new posts under this one. One of them says it was written on Saturday, but it wasn't--that is, I started it on Saturday and posted it tonight. Also, thank you all for your copious comments on that last post! It's been a delight to read them.

And now, on to some "News", as Bilbo would say.

Last week was rather miserable, to be quite honest, and this week hasn't started out much better. Instead of giving you a summary of the whole drab week, I'll tell you about last Thursday, which was probably the best day.

This is practically my long, rambly, and pieced-together journal entry. Some of the day is retold in present tense.


I spilled apple juice all over my breakfast this morning. During breakfast, I tried to memorize definitions for an archaeology quiz, but the berries they served this morning made me think of home, and after breakfast, I "wasted" half an hour writing a poem about it. I practiced my flute until my lesson, which went fairly well. We actually reached the top of the third page of the Poulenc--I've been practicing all of it for nearly a year now, but my teacher hasn't had a chance to hear all of it, and ever since I've been studying with him, we've been stuck on the first page.

After Romantic British Literature, Tara and I picked up Alisha for lunch. Alisha wanted to see my scrapbook, so I showed it to her. During lunch, we talked about housing and SYR, the annual girls' dorm dance. I ate tacos while Alisha tried to eat fried chicken with spinach cheese sauce (under the elegant name "chicken florentine" on the cafeteria menu board). After picking at it, she gave up in disgust. "It's just not natural," she complained. SYR this year is a masquerade, and tonight my dorm is hosting a pizza supper with a mask-making party to follow. Since Tara had to go to a lecture tonight, I offered to make a mask for her.

I spent the afternoon studying. A.C. stopped by and tried to be cheerful by juggling a pair of oranges. She's quite sick. Various people were at the supper this evening in the lobby of my dorm. After most of the people had finished eating, a short, tight-knit girl with spiky blond hair organized people to make masks. She gave everyone plain, white, plastic masks to decorate. After eating pizza, I made a mask for Tara. There were plain, white, plastic masks to decorate. I slowly chose faux feathers to glue at the brow of the mask—light blue, aqua, and black, in a fuzzy plume. I glued blue sequins on over the eyes, and black sequins over the cheeks (the mask was a half-mask), and a silver rhinestone between the eyes. Hopefully, Tara will like it.

At 6:45, I left to meet Syneva, Alisha, Jenny H., and Asher. Syneva and Alisha play in the local semi-professional orchestra. They had a concert tonight, and the three of us went to hear them.

The concert hall is a lovely building, in the Art Noveau style. Jenny and I took seats in front of Asher on the right side, fairly close to the orchestra. Jenny told me to poke her if she fell asleep. She'd confessed in the car to Alisha and me that she's been staying up far too late, chatting with her friends in the dorm.

The concert introduced itself with a silly little tribute to Mozart's 250th birthday, a combination of "Happy Birthday" and the opening of one of his symphonies.

The orchestra began with Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture. Then came Schumann's cello concerto, played by a young Russian man with a smooth face, dark hair. He swayed to and fro as though dancing the tango with his instrument. His cello had a very sweet sound, shy, like his smile when he stood up to acknowledge the audience's applause.

During intermission, Jenny bought a package of rainbow Skittles. She sucked the pink ones, the citrus smell lingering on the air around her. Three rambunctious, scruffy young boys joked bawdily about their pranks and dashed up and down the aisle, while their father, a big man in a grey suit, with a Tigger tie and a long ponytail, ignored them.

After intermission, the orchestra performed "Fountains of Rome" and "Pines of Rome", both by Respighi. They're both lovely pieces. "Fountains" is full of trickling harps, reminding me of water flicking onto warm marble. At one point, the orchestra plays a fountain that is sculpted with Poseidon and various sea-horses. Trampling cellos, like stallions, leaped above the violins and the organ. "Pines of Rome" began with children's games, then moved to a row of pine trees near a cemetery. A trumpet solo played a reequiem to break your heart, while violas swelled like thin wind. A huge gong growled as though the grave had opened, and a dead Caesar had stepped out, with black gashes for eyes, like the holes in Agamemnon's gold burial mask. The piece finished with the Appian Way, the old legionary road into Rome. A second trumpet section played from the balcony behind us. The noise was overpowering: like pounding feet, and sun blazing on bronze armor, and the taut, tense faces under red-crested helmets. The weight of the music was immense. The conductor's baton wavered furiously, like a pennant in a hot wind.

Before the last triumphant chord, like the clash of spears on shields, had died away, the audience was cheering and clapping. Asher remarked, cynically, later that “If you play loud enough, they’ll applaud.” This last movement was supposedly called, by Leonard Bernstein, the loudest orchestral piece ever written.

The three girls were in a “warm” mood after the concert, though as we walked through the parking lot to the car, I bounced a few jig steps to keep myself warm. The parking lot was crowded, the narrow capillary roads around it congested with cars. As we pulled out, another car beside us, a “Park Avenue”, began to back up when we were still behind it. I glanced at it nervously, and Syneva honked her horn insistently until the car stopped backing up. “Old people,” she sighed. Jenny shared the last of her Skittles with Alisha and Syneva, pouring glinting, sticky beads into their palms. “Do you have anymore?” Syneva asked when her own tangy-sweet mouthful was finished. “No… oh, wait!” Jenny prodded around in her purse and came up with two more Skittles, which Syneva sucked.

On the drive back to campus, Jenny fell asleep with her head on Alisha’s shoulder, while Syneva and Asher discussed their cello quartet—trying to find two other players, and coming up with parts. Bright lights glided past in the luminous darkness—red hotel signs, blue Budweiser advertisements, white-toothed models posing for clothing stores or hospitals or car agencies. Syneva dropped us off in the parking lot. Alisha and I scurried inside our dorm, while Asher and Jenny strolled off to their dorm.