Yearly Archives: 2009

To Write And To Remember

I admit that I not only save oth­er peo­ple’s posts, but entire blogs.

Sometimes, there are entries I like to read over again. Other times, I just like to be remind­ed of how right I was. But more often than not, it’s the ephemer­al nature of blogs in gen­er­al, com­bined with the fick­le nature of ado­les­cent writ­ers still try­ing to “define them­selves” on a free medi­um, that gives me the itch to save. So many writ­ers I used to fol­low have changed domain names, start­ed pro­tect­ing their entries, or delet­ed their blogs.

Some things are garbage and should be for­got­ten or thrown away — but some things deserve to be kept too. Word-for-word, exact­ly the way it was spo­ken, because that’s the way it was expressed.

Fortunately, or unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on your point-of-view, our words do last. Just because they aren’t there any­more, does­n’t mean they were nev­er spo­ken.

There are con­se­quences to the things we write, whether we want them or not.

An Opera at The Met

When I watched Moonstruck in my uni­ver­si­ty “Music in the Movies” class, we stud­ied a scene where Ronny Cammareri (Nicholas Cage’s char­ac­ter) has a date with Loretta Castorini (played by Cher) at the Metropolitan Opera. She takes off her coat, and he says, “Thank you…You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Opera”.

In his face, you see that he’s not talk­ing just about the opera. After los­ing his hand and fiancée, he’s at the Met, arguably the most pres­ti­gious opera house in the world, with a beau­ti­ful woman in a black dress, and he’s missed this.

Even in the screen­play, there are set direc­tions for the scene when they arrive:

CROWDS OF PEOPLE in beau­ti­ful clothes fill the plaza cre­at­ed by the three great build­ings. A glo­ri­ous foun­tain filled with lights forms the cen­ter­piece. Behind the foun­tain, grand and splen­did­ly lit, is the mag­i­cal Metropolitan Opera House.

Ever since, The Met has been this place I’ve dreamed of attend­ing. Unfortunately, it’s in New York, and decent seats can cost over $100.

Orfeo ed Euridice

So when my local movie the­atre start­ed offer­ing live HD broad­casts of per­for­mances there, I decid­ed I should go. To ful­fill a dream in spir­it, if not in the flesh.

Continue read­ing “An Opera at The Met”…

Got My House Back

House stippling

The house is final­ly back to its’ for­mer glo­ry. The exhaust pipes to my water heater and fur­nace have been replaced, the holes in the ceil­ings have been patched up, sand­ed, stip­pled, and paint­ed.

This means a few things of sig­nif­i­cance:

  • I get to dress based on mood again. I would come home and hang my clothes off the ban­is­ter, then put the same clothes on in the morn­ing, because my clos­et doors would be taped shut to pre­vent dust and errant paint/stipple from get­ting in there.
  • I get to sleep in my bed again. The entire bed­room was a mess, so I had been sleep­ing on the couch for almost three weeks. It felt weird to go back to a big mat­tress, like I was sleep­ing on some sort of unlim­it­ed sur­face area.
  • I get to use my photo/Tai Chi stu­dio. Almost all my fur­ni­ture was moved to the guest room. I haven’t been able to prac­tice my Tai Chi, or take pic­tures of things against a drop sheet.
  • I have the use of my main com­put­er. Playing games on a lap­top screen does­n’t cut it when you’re used to three 24″ mon­i­tors, and music sounds the way it’s sup­posed to when you have a decent sub­woofer.
  • No more time off work. I’m lucky in that I have such a short com­mute, but being there dur­ing con­struc­tion still meant that I lost two days of pay.

I spent most of the week­end wip­ing dust of every­thing down­stairs — walls, mir­rors, dec­o­ra­tions, counter tops. The splat­ters of paint were tak­en care of with a bot­tle of Varsol and a Q‑tip. A few paint touch-ups were need­ed too, but noth­ing too bad. Then the house got an over­all clean­ing, to get rid of the evi­dence of mud­dy boots, dirt, and ran­dom pieces of garbage brought in dur­ing the whole process.

My back and feet are still sore from rush­ing to get every­thing done, but it was oh so worth it to have the cozy com­fort of my house again.

Love Bias

Sometimes, she reach­es down and grabs a hand­ful of my der­rière. I laugh a ner­vous laugh, and she chides me.

It’s a reflex. None of my girl­friends have been so zeal­ous in their pinch­ing, or rev­eled in such an act. My laugh is one of sur­prise, and a good one at that.

This is what upsets her. But how should I react oth­er­wise? I hard­ly con­sid­er this thin-framed body, a frail com­par­i­son to the phys­i­cal con­ven­tions of a man, as being sex­u­al or attrac­tive.

This is why I think she loves me.

Otherwise, she’d see me as the rest of the world sees me.