In penance

Really, it's been years (two weeks). Sometimes we all just need to take a sabbatical, regroup our thoughts, and decide what is and is not worth unloading into the ether.

The term is almost over, and Dublin seems more temporary with each day. Self-deception, probably, since I have two terms, four exams, four essays, and ten pieces for string quartet to complete before I leave. Not to mention that I need to go to Denmark/Sweden/Holland/Spain.

I forced them to cut my hours at work, and my housemate casually suggested I should probably get out more, though in nicer terms. I eschewed my studies (Virginia Woolf) for the day, and made a successful trip to the Porter House with a few people from work, in celebration of Katharina's last day. So now I'm nearly done with To The Lighthouse (with notes!) and I seem to have made better progress on my string pieces than I have in weeks. There's something to be said for leaving the house and taking a break. There's also something to be said for cask-fermented ale: slightly bitter, not so cold, not so carbonated, and definitely some hops. It can only be served from the cask/keg it was fermented in, so you can't get it more than a few weeks old, really. The New York Times had an article the other day about cask ales, so I had to search one out.

I'm leaving for home Tuesday morning, 6:30 a.m., for my Grandma's funeral. I find it hard to talk about with people here, and it's sometimes a necessity when I have to get time off work (missing Bewley's's (?) 80th birthday, they were sure mad about that) or get information on classes missed. I'm never good at taking sympathy, and I generally just want people to say "okay" and get the job done, not try some awkward comfort. I'm just glad that I'll be able to be home with the extended family, especially the ones who only exist in memories from the lake house my Grandma invited us all up to every summer. Strange the way cousins work, that I am no less related to these people I remember only vicariously as I am to the cousins I see every other day I'm home, or twice a year in Idaho.

In clarification, "Call me Chekhov" was a reference to how my day had no real structure, and ended in my getting up in the middle of the night to eat gooseberries from the kitchen. Really, though, I didn't fall asleep until about 4:30 that night.

I can't remember if I posted this link before, but if I did here's a new post of his. Jeremy Denk, a classical pianist, has some of the best musical thoughts I've ever read. Not just music, though, as that's too restrictive. In this one, he compares a passage he read in Watt by Beckett (just like me!) which he picked up in a Dublin book store (!) after playing a concert at the National Concert Hall (the analogy falls short). It is excellent, provided you study both the semiotic theory of Barthes and Beethoven's op. 96 Violin Sonata.

Think Denk