You know then that it is not the reason

It looks as if the Fates have conspired to make me stay inside and compose all day. I woke up at 9, willingly no less, to slight cold and a drizzle of rain. It looks like Dublin again, finally.

The other night, after scrapping that Node Ensemble stück once I missed the deadline, Ben called me to tell me that they were planning on programming it for their April concert. So, no rehearsals have happened yet; I minimized it to electric guitar, violin, and recorder, hopefully to decrease rehearsal time and make it more precise. Four short movements, less ambition than the original, but I think it will turn out far better. Plus it gives me a chance to use that movement for electric guitar trio, without having to bother with an extra four instruments. It's still the poem "Of Mere Being," by Wallace Stevens; the electric guitar trio movement is the stanza:

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

Four more days (I hope) of work. This Sunday, and all next weekend. Oh, and I got the grant from Willamette to study the community of living Irish composers, so I'll be here all summer, until late July or early August. Stop by. It's a nice place; I hear it rains all summer. I'm really getting into delicious mushrooms now. The yuppie grocery store (Fallon & Byrne) has all their specialty mushrooms at a mix-n-match price, so I just get a bit of each and throw it into an risotto (two days ago) or an omelet (this morning) or maybe even a pasta dish, with caraway seeds (T.B.D.).

I haven't been up this early (willingly) in ages. I don't know what to do with myself.