So, I had a crazy dream last night, which left me feeling inexplicably guilty the following morning. I think that the dream stemmed from my recent involvement with a site which promotes international communication - I initially created my profile on it so that I could practice French in a practical environment.
In any case, the dream began with my arrival at my mom's house, presumably coming from my father's house. As I walked up onto the porch, I saw my mother clutching what seemed to be a yellow legal pad, completely absorbed in its contents. Gary stared open-mouthed over her shoulder, and as I took all of this in, I saw Wesley through the window of the front door as he approached with a can of Coke. He opened the door, walked onto the porch, and greeted me, rousing everyone from their yellow-legal-pad-induced reverie.
"What are you guys looking at?" I asked curiously.
"Well," my mom began cautiously, "it seems we've somehow come into contact with a deceased person through this yellow legal pad," at which point she turned the legal pad, where I could see about half a page written in a cursive-like scrawl which was unfamiliar to all of us. It was also around this time that I noticed my French-English dictionary, which I had been given at a book sale, sitting next to her on the porch bench.
"Why is that there?" I inquired, pointing to the heavy book.
Gary answered this time, "Oh, we've found that the 'ghost,' 'phantom,' what-have-you - it seems that it will only respond when we question it in French, but when it responds on the pad, it responds in English."
"That's weird," I said, though curious now to undertake this challenge of French speaking skills. "Let me try for a minute." I took the legal pad and walked to the opposite side of the porch, where I read and absorbed the contents of the ghost's answers. It seemed like my mother had been questioning the ghost mainly about the circumstances surrounding its death, which had, or so I read, something to do with the deceased's father. My mother proceeded to ask something along the lines of "Did you and your father always have problems?" because the answer scrawled after the first one involved an abusive childhood dominated by the austere presence of a belligerent, drunken-father. I pondered what a good follow-up question might be to this.
"Apres que vous avez demenage de la maison de votre pere, est-ce qu'avez-vous passe une vie contente?" (which translates to "After you moved from your father's house, did you have a happier life?"). I thought that this question would work, owing to the fact that it wasn't nearly as personal as my mother's two previous questions - it left him room to fabricate, if he needed to - and it dealt with his joy rather than his sorrow. Standing with the pad on the wooden banister of the porch, I asked the question aloud in French. I felt silly, and I decided that I would only stand waiting like an idiot for a minute before giving the pad back to my mother. However, just when I was about to rejoin my mom, Wesley, and Gary on the other side of the porch, the cursive-style writing began to appear, and as I squinted my eyes to discern the beginning of the sentence, I woke up, feeling at first extremely exasperated that I didn't get to read the message, and then oddly guilty, what with my unconscious mind straying toward these strange depictions of the occult, which is never a good thing to mess with. In any case, it was an interesting dream.
I finally spoke aloud a riddle-type thing that I have been composing in my mind for a while now, which I have entitled the cobbler comparison, due to its ability to extend to just about anyone's general unsatisfaction with relationships, from common friendships to those which may be far more complex. My audience was Wesley and my mom, as we were walking Kalyn and Bear in the neighborhood tonight, and they offered an interesting commentary (the reason I started to ramble about it in the first place was because Wesley had a falling-out with one of his friends and was starting to vent about it, and so I figured the cobbler comparison would fit into the conversation quite nicely, which, surprisingly, it did). Anyways, here is a rough written version.
So, there's a poor cobbler who lives on the outskirts of a fairly-large city; he's taken up the family job, which is obviously cobbling, and he's good at it, and mostly content with his life. Now that his parents have passed away, the only thing that he lacks in his life is a wife with whom he can settle down and start a family - so he whittles away his days, making shoes and selling to the occasional customer, wondering when the love of his life might walk in.
One day, an unexpected woman, a resident of one of the more lavish apartments of downtown, wanders in curiously after taking the wrong bus. Charmed by some je-ne-sais-quoi which dominates the atmosphere of the shoe store, she shops around for a while, assisted by the eager cobbler, who is just as interested in her as she is in the store's atmosphere. She finds the nicest pair of women's shoes in the store and decides to buy them; while ringing up the shoes, the cobbler promises that if she returns at least once a month, he will continually update his women's stock, making finer shoes even than the ones that she purchased. Pleased with her purchase and entertained by the cobbler, she promises - and indeed returns.
Each month he supplies her with new shoes (each pair with a considerable discount that she knows nothing about) and as the months progress, their small-talk between purchases transforms into the chatting of friends. They go out to coffee a few times, and the cobbler begins to wonder if he has found the girl that he has been looking for. However, after six months of good fortune, things begin to go downhill - one month passes without the girl coming back as she had promised; he sadly stores away the shoes on the very last hour of the last day of the month. When she comes back half a month later and the cobbler asks for an explanation, she explains briskly that she had received a promotion, which made her life twice as busy as it was before - meaning also that she didn't have time to go out to coffee with the cobbler that night; in fact, she chooses to add, she has a date with one of her colleagues. She doesn't go out and say that it is a date, but as the cobbler rings up the shoes, he can discern what she expects of it from the light in her eyes. He closes shop up early that night, sad and unsure of what he should do; yet, he is convinced by this point that Fate has intervened in his existence - this girl has so radically changed his life from how it was before that she must - she must - still have some part to play. He decides that it is his turn to act.
From beneath his bed he pulls his secret stash of the finest shoe-making materials available to any cobbler - using all of the skills taught to him by his father, he begins to piece together the most beautiful shoes he can imagine, crafted, of course, for the beautiful woman whom he wants to make his bride. He determines that if he puts three months of work into the shoes, they'll be ready by Christmas - then, he plans to declare his love to the woman.
The months pass, and the woman doesn't break her promise again; however, her visits are short and aloof - occasionally she talks on her cell phone the whole time that she is in the store, and she never goes out for coffee anymore. This distance only makes the cobbler work harder on the gift he is secretly crafting for her.
One morning in November, he goes into work to find that his stash of fine leather has been raided in the night - furious, he stomps back into the security room to watch the footage from the cameras. Around 3 in the morning, he sees a car which is unmistakably his beloved's car pull up outside of his store; from the passenger seat emerges a strange man whom he has never seen before - it is this man that steals the materials, and his beloved who drives the getaway car. Hoping that he is mistaken, he waits a whole month for his beloved to come to his store - when she doesn't, he contacts one of her colleagues and inquires about her whereabouts.
"Oh, she didn't tell you?" the colleague says into the phone. "She moved up to Ontario and married some cobbler - his father had a store up there, and now he makes tons of money off of his fine Italian leather shoes. As for her, she's got it made." The cobbler hangs up the phone. He wonders how the girl of his dreams could have allowed another man to steal his materials for the former's benefit. Most of all, and this is the question - If you were the cobbler, would you destroy the shoes that you had made (assuming that they were crafted specifically for this woman and could never be the gift of another) or would you somehow get them to the girl in Ontario, owing to the fact that the shoes, through the beauty of the cobbler's selfless art, represent a person's purest ideal form - and the fact that the person that the girl once had been must still reside in her somewhere - (and in any case, the shoes would be of no other use) - ? Which one?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Hobbit Hill, Macy Gray, and Driver's Ed.
I have several things to report today, as I have been neglecting my blogging duties for over a week now. I'll start with the first dream, entitled "Hobbit Hill" for reasons on which I'll elaborate momentarily. In any case, the dream didn't start on Hobbit Hill; my dad, my mom, Wesley, Gary (my mom's roommate), and I were driving through rolling hills in the countryside. It was nearing nightfall, and my dad, driving, called back to us, "We're almost there." As the sun set behind the furthest hill, retracting its red tendrils from the translucent stars, we heard the grumble of gravel beneath the tires, indicating that we had pulled into a driveway. There, before us, was Heather's parents' house (which is in Colorado). As awkward as this would be in real life (given the fact that Heather and my dad separated a while back and that she never got to know my mom that well), it ran very smoothly in the dream. We all unloaded our suitcases from the trunk (I suppose we planned to stay for an extended period of time), trudged toward the lit windows of the house, and were accepted warmly inside by Heather's parents, who were happy to see all of us. After we set our things down in the corner of an upstairs bedroom, we congregated downstairs in front of the television, where we were all chatting pleasantly about the drive and a recent blizzard which had inundated Colorado with snow. This went on for a while, until we heard a loud knocking on the door; when Mrs. Gosnell (Heather's mom) opened the door, we could see her daughter's face in the space produced between door and wall. Heather came inside and began to have a serious-sounding discussion with my father, who was sitting on the couch and looking up sheepishly every now and then. Meanwhile, my mom, Wesley, Gary, and I escaped through the back door and into the car, leaving my dad to face whatever doom awaited. We drove back through the rolling hills, though it was now early in the day and the sun bounced jovially between the hills and reflected itself in streams running along the road. We saw an exceptionally large hill looming in the distance, on which was constructed a building that looked remarkably like Reynolds, my high school. My mom pulled the car into a little gravelly parking lot at the base of the hill, looking up at the building curiously. A sign was posted nearby, with an arrow pointing up to the building, which read "Youth Symphony Auditions: Go to Auditorium." I happened to have the trumpet in the back seat with me, and so I decided, "Why not audition?" given the fact that even if I didn't make it, I might run into Jeremy or Anita, as they regularly audition for these things due to their "ninja" musical abilities. My mom said that she'd park the car and wait at the bottom of the hill until my audition was finished, so I left the car and began the steep climb to the peak of the hill. I entered the building through the front door, and was surprised to find that the interior of the building was very similar to the layout of Brunson Elementary's interior, with a long hallway branching off in rooms on either side. I walked across the imitation-marble floor, turning left into the auditorium, where a group of kids around my age sat in a group in the middle of the floor, clutching their instruments. The weirdest thing was the silence; no one was practicing while they waited for their name to be called. I sat down cautiously, slightly away from the group. A huddle of adults stood at the front of the room, speaking quietly together; when they broke away, I waved at a man whom I recognized to be the director of the Youth Symphony. He walked over, and I asked him how long it would be until the auditions were over.
"What's your last name?" he asked, pulling out a clipboard from the inside of his jacket.
"Witt." I told him, and he wrote it at the bottom of the list. Looking up, he replied, "It could be about half an hour or longer; we're still waiting for a few of the judges to arrive."
"Oh," I said, "then I'll just go and tell my mom how long it'll be." With a wave, he dismissed me and I left the room clutching the handle of the trumpet, nearly running smack into the director of the legit Symphony, who was talking feverishly into a cell phone. I scooted out of the way as he entered the room, did a minor double-take, and exited the building once more. I tottered down the steep hill (it was my gesticulating, at this point in the story as I related it to my father, that caused him to christen this hill "Hobbit Hill," because he seemed to think that my poor visual representation of tottering down a hill was very hobbit-like) to where the car was parked at the base. My mom rolled down her window and I informed her that the audition would probably take half an hour or more, and that it would probably be best for her to go and rescue my dad and buy him some lunch before coming back to pick me up. She agreed, and drove off in another rumble of gravel. As I turned to climb back up the hill, I saw more Symphony members clambering up from all sides; inferring that the judges had finally arrived, I dashed up the steep, laborious slope, re-entered the building, and sat cross-legged with all of the other conversing students. Ms. Rheder was there, and she and the Youth Symphony director continued to pace nervously at the front of the room, while the legit Symphony director paced in the hallway outside the door, his cell phone like an extension of his ear. Students were called one-by-one out of the room for their audition. I was eventually called in for mine, which was supervised by Ms. Rheder and the two respective symphony directors. There was a montage, and then I was tottering back down Hobbit Hill with no recollection of my audition at all, except for the fact that I was told afterwards to report back to the auditorium the next day to find out if I made the Youth Symphony. My mom was already parked at the bottom of the hill, and my dad exited the car to help me load the trumpet in the trunk. Shortly after here I woke up as I was straining to remember my audition.
I had the next dream at my friend Shannon's house. I've forgotten a large chunk of it, but the setting of the part that I remember was a Kohl's or a Marshall's clothing store. My mom, Wesley, Gary, and I were wandering down the main aisle of the store, looking at the clothing racks on either side of the aisle for potential purchases. Suddenly, over the radio came the opening chords of a Macy Gray song that I now know to be called "I Try." Let me take a moment to explain that, though until a few days ago I didn't know the name of any Macy Gray song (I'd still heard them and heard of Macy Gray), the sound of her music has always been like comfort food to me for some reason. I suppose it's probably because when I was around 5 or 6, the radio stations at little stores like Marshall's and Kohl's would play her music a lot, and so now it has that nostalgic air about it. So, in the dream, when the song began playing, I started to groove to it a little bit, dancing in the aisle. Everyone laughed at me and my mom asked, "Are you rocking out to Macy Gray?"
I replied, "Yes. I love when they play her songs. They're just so easy to listen to!"
Gary rolled his eyes and said, "You are so white, Robyn; the whitest person I know, in fact."
This is exactly like something he would say, and so I felt a tinge of irritation as I inquired, "What about enjoying Macy Gray makes one 'white' with that negative connotation that you just applied to it?"
The argument continued from here, until the song was over and I was frustrated that I had missed the whole thing while arguing the validity of my appreciation for Macy Gray. This was the end of that dream.
Today was important for two reasons; most importantly, it was my mom's birthday, and we celebrated this by going out to Pancho Villas for lunch, where I bestowed upon her the gift of Kahlil Gibran (Tears and Laughter) and my own bilingual prose poem/poeme en prose, written after the style of a Baudelaire poeme en prose. She cried, even though I advised her in her card-type-thing not to, since it was her birthday. After lunch, she dropped me off for the second-most-important thing today: my last day of in-car driver's ed. I think, after my six hours of behind-the-wheel instruction, that I'm a fairly decent driver of an automatic. I only ran off the road once (today), and that was because I was distracted by a gigantic cemetary to the side of a road which intersects Reynolda Road near Golden India. Otherwise, I aced turning, reversing, the 3-point-turn, and even U-turns (which we also practiced today, on Silas Creek Parkway). My only other big mistake of event occured on the day when I was pulling into an aisle in a parking lot and I banged the back tire against the median curb when taking a sharp right. I didn't hurt the tire, thank goodness, but there was a loud, rather frightening noise that accompanied my error, which caused Stormy (who was doing the in-car portion with me) to gasp in the backseat. Throughout my three days of driver's ed, not only have I learned many of the crucial practical driving skills, I've also learned quite a bit about Winston-Salem as a city and Forsyth County. We drove all over the place, from Bethania to Yadkinville, covering almost all the country roads (and traffic circles) in Forsyth County. As far as traffic circles go, we ordained Stormy as the unofficial Queen of traffic circles in Forsyth County today. It just seemed that in her drives, she happened to run across them everywhere she went. I happened to know our instructor personally from a long time ago, back when my dad was a friend of his family - I suppose, like with most relationships, they just grew busy and traveled apart figuratively. But it was neat having him as an instructor, and I asked him to tell his family "Hello" from us. That is about everything interesting that has happened recently, except that my dad and I just returned from a Winston-Salem Dash game, which we lost spectacularly to the opposing team; the game was still fun, however, as we spent the night talking with Phil and Julie, who are friends of my dad from his meetings. They told us that our friendly neighborhood piano prodigy, Dr. Ruskin Cooper, is currently touring in Germany. They played a recording he had done of a Liszt piece (which was cool because I'd never heard him play Liszt before, nor have I heard much Liszt in the first place) on the way to the game in the car. I can't remember if I wrote about it on here, but I am still left flabbergasted (in a good way) by his performance at his house that we were fortunate enough to witness. He plays with passion and precision comparable to Glenn Gould (though not really comparable, since Glenn likes to play with a Baroque style and the pieces that I've heard Dr. Cooper play are Romantic). Whether or not they are comparable, they are both awesome. In any case, I shall now sign out for the night, retire to my bedroom, and read some more from the Jodi Picoult book that Ms. Jones lent me.
"What's your last name?" he asked, pulling out a clipboard from the inside of his jacket.
"Witt." I told him, and he wrote it at the bottom of the list. Looking up, he replied, "It could be about half an hour or longer; we're still waiting for a few of the judges to arrive."
"Oh," I said, "then I'll just go and tell my mom how long it'll be." With a wave, he dismissed me and I left the room clutching the handle of the trumpet, nearly running smack into the director of the legit Symphony, who was talking feverishly into a cell phone. I scooted out of the way as he entered the room, did a minor double-take, and exited the building once more. I tottered down the steep hill (it was my gesticulating, at this point in the story as I related it to my father, that caused him to christen this hill "Hobbit Hill," because he seemed to think that my poor visual representation of tottering down a hill was very hobbit-like) to where the car was parked at the base. My mom rolled down her window and I informed her that the audition would probably take half an hour or more, and that it would probably be best for her to go and rescue my dad and buy him some lunch before coming back to pick me up. She agreed, and drove off in another rumble of gravel. As I turned to climb back up the hill, I saw more Symphony members clambering up from all sides; inferring that the judges had finally arrived, I dashed up the steep, laborious slope, re-entered the building, and sat cross-legged with all of the other conversing students. Ms. Rheder was there, and she and the Youth Symphony director continued to pace nervously at the front of the room, while the legit Symphony director paced in the hallway outside the door, his cell phone like an extension of his ear. Students were called one-by-one out of the room for their audition. I was eventually called in for mine, which was supervised by Ms. Rheder and the two respective symphony directors. There was a montage, and then I was tottering back down Hobbit Hill with no recollection of my audition at all, except for the fact that I was told afterwards to report back to the auditorium the next day to find out if I made the Youth Symphony. My mom was already parked at the bottom of the hill, and my dad exited the car to help me load the trumpet in the trunk. Shortly after here I woke up as I was straining to remember my audition.
I had the next dream at my friend Shannon's house. I've forgotten a large chunk of it, but the setting of the part that I remember was a Kohl's or a Marshall's clothing store. My mom, Wesley, Gary, and I were wandering down the main aisle of the store, looking at the clothing racks on either side of the aisle for potential purchases. Suddenly, over the radio came the opening chords of a Macy Gray song that I now know to be called "I Try." Let me take a moment to explain that, though until a few days ago I didn't know the name of any Macy Gray song (I'd still heard them and heard of Macy Gray), the sound of her music has always been like comfort food to me for some reason. I suppose it's probably because when I was around 5 or 6, the radio stations at little stores like Marshall's and Kohl's would play her music a lot, and so now it has that nostalgic air about it. So, in the dream, when the song began playing, I started to groove to it a little bit, dancing in the aisle. Everyone laughed at me and my mom asked, "Are you rocking out to Macy Gray?"
I replied, "Yes. I love when they play her songs. They're just so easy to listen to!"
Gary rolled his eyes and said, "You are so white, Robyn; the whitest person I know, in fact."
This is exactly like something he would say, and so I felt a tinge of irritation as I inquired, "What about enjoying Macy Gray makes one 'white' with that negative connotation that you just applied to it?"
The argument continued from here, until the song was over and I was frustrated that I had missed the whole thing while arguing the validity of my appreciation for Macy Gray. This was the end of that dream.
Today was important for two reasons; most importantly, it was my mom's birthday, and we celebrated this by going out to Pancho Villas for lunch, where I bestowed upon her the gift of Kahlil Gibran (Tears and Laughter) and my own bilingual prose poem/poeme en prose, written after the style of a Baudelaire poeme en prose. She cried, even though I advised her in her card-type-thing not to, since it was her birthday. After lunch, she dropped me off for the second-most-important thing today: my last day of in-car driver's ed. I think, after my six hours of behind-the-wheel instruction, that I'm a fairly decent driver of an automatic. I only ran off the road once (today), and that was because I was distracted by a gigantic cemetary to the side of a road which intersects Reynolda Road near Golden India. Otherwise, I aced turning, reversing, the 3-point-turn, and even U-turns (which we also practiced today, on Silas Creek Parkway). My only other big mistake of event occured on the day when I was pulling into an aisle in a parking lot and I banged the back tire against the median curb when taking a sharp right. I didn't hurt the tire, thank goodness, but there was a loud, rather frightening noise that accompanied my error, which caused Stormy (who was doing the in-car portion with me) to gasp in the backseat. Throughout my three days of driver's ed, not only have I learned many of the crucial practical driving skills, I've also learned quite a bit about Winston-Salem as a city and Forsyth County. We drove all over the place, from Bethania to Yadkinville, covering almost all the country roads (and traffic circles) in Forsyth County. As far as traffic circles go, we ordained Stormy as the unofficial Queen of traffic circles in Forsyth County today. It just seemed that in her drives, she happened to run across them everywhere she went. I happened to know our instructor personally from a long time ago, back when my dad was a friend of his family - I suppose, like with most relationships, they just grew busy and traveled apart figuratively. But it was neat having him as an instructor, and I asked him to tell his family "Hello" from us. That is about everything interesting that has happened recently, except that my dad and I just returned from a Winston-Salem Dash game, which we lost spectacularly to the opposing team; the game was still fun, however, as we spent the night talking with Phil and Julie, who are friends of my dad from his meetings. They told us that our friendly neighborhood piano prodigy, Dr. Ruskin Cooper, is currently touring in Germany. They played a recording he had done of a Liszt piece (which was cool because I'd never heard him play Liszt before, nor have I heard much Liszt in the first place) on the way to the game in the car. I can't remember if I wrote about it on here, but I am still left flabbergasted (in a good way) by his performance at his house that we were fortunate enough to witness. He plays with passion and precision comparable to Glenn Gould (though not really comparable, since Glenn likes to play with a Baroque style and the pieces that I've heard Dr. Cooper play are Romantic). Whether or not they are comparable, they are both awesome. In any case, I shall now sign out for the night, retire to my bedroom, and read some more from the Jodi Picoult book that Ms. Jones lent me.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Boo Radley, Captive, and Church Dreams
I don't know why, but summer has brought almost-nightly dreams. The last three that I've had (on the past three days respectively) have been quite interesting, enough so that I decided to come on here and report them.
The first dream, which I had three nights ago while sleeping over at Elisabeth's house, largely involved Boo Radley. This is not the first time that I have had To Kill a Mockingbird-related dreams. I generally have at least one or two of these within weeks of finishing the book, and typically, the characters of Jem, Scout, and Dill are replaced by myself and my three cousins on my mom's side, and we are trying to persuade Boo Radley to leave his house, using the tactics that the three children employ in the book. The one difference with the dream that I had last night was that instead of representing myself, I was Scout in the dream, accompanied by the Dill and Jem from the film version of the book. The scene that we were re-enacting was the nighttime scene before Dill's departure for Meridian, when the two boys decide to attempt to peek in the windows of the Radley house. Scout, though reluctant at first, follows along, and the three children enter the lot from the rear fence, which is adjacent to the schoolyard. The events then unfolded as they do in the book (and which I won't reveal in their entirety for those of you who haven't had the good fortune to read the book yet).
The following night, back at my mom's house, I had very disturbing dreams. At the beginning of the dream, I was dawdling in the front yard of my mom's house, bored, when Wesley wheeled the bikes around to the front of the house (we had stored them in the basement through the winter, for lack of other place to put them in the house, and I was afraid to go and retrieve one to ride because there is a mob of crickets in the basement). He let me take my mom's bike for a quick ride around the neighborhood. I hopped on, cruised up to Country Club Road, turned right, and traveled all the way down to Five Points, where I took another right onto Stratford, eventually pulling into the parking lot of the Thruway shopping center. For the latter part of the journey, I had had to ride the bike on the road, which was extremely stressful for someone who is accustomed to riding exclusively on the sidewalks. Really, the only reason that I had pulled into the shopping center in the first place was to escape the traffic of Stratford Road. However, as I parked the bike near Borders, I saw my mom emerge from a nearby shop with her arms full of bags. I asked her where she was going.
"I'm just heading home," she said, "but your dad and I are going to meet you back here at Borders in about 20 minutes; then, we'll all go out for lunch."
I told her that her plan sounded good, and she continued on to her car and drove back the way I had come. I entered the cafe of the bookstore and took a seat at one of the tables in the center of the room. It wasn't busy at all that day; in fact, there was only one group of around five people in the room besides myself, and they were all congregated near the squashy armchairs near the window. Even the employees weren't stationed at their usual spots behind the counter. I sat uneasily, wondering what was going on. Eventually, the group over by the armchairs approached my table, and the surly man who looked to be in charge started questioning me about where I lived and other things; I told him that it was none of his business, and he responded by drawing out a knife. I was presently tied up by the man and his company, gagged with a piece of cloth, carried out to the parking lot, and thrown in the back of a truck. The truck drove around for a very long time, until, when I was finally pulled from the truck, I could tell that we were in the mountains or somewhere else far out in the wilderness. I was tied to a chair in this decadent shack, and then my kidnappers left the room. I was terrified, because I knew that there was probably no chance that my parents would find me - and my purse had been left at the bookstore, so there was no way of calling the police (there was no telephone in the shack either). However, after what may have been several hours or several days, I heard a commotion outside, and suddenly, my dad stormed into the shack, untied me, ungagged me, and pulled me to my feet, on which I was unsteady, having been tied to a chair for a long period of time. I was just about to ask my dad how he had found me when he shushed me, saying, "We have to hurry; the people outside scattered when I showed up, and I don't know where they are." As we ran back outside to his car, my dad called the police from his cell phone and informed them of our situation, describing each of the kidnappers in detail. It was night, and we quickly hopped in the car and began to drive away through rolling hills and on dirt roads which winded through forests. Though we were escaping, the anxiety of the dream had not been lifted - for the criminals could, at any time, emerge from the trees on either side of the road and sabotage our vehicle, and they had more people in their group than we did, and more weapons. It was about at this point that I woke up.
The last dream, which I had the night after the dream described above, was very short. I dreamt that my dad and I were driving to church one morning, and as we pulled up outside of the Sanctuary, we saw advertised on the plaque by the door that an intern pastor would be preaching that morning. My dad, upon seeing this, veered immediately from the parking lot and drove off. He said that he didn't want to go unless our senior pastor was preaching. Owing to the fact that I also prefer the senior pastor's sermons and to the fact that I was in the passenger seat, I didn't argue. As we pulled into the parking lot of Mr. Waffle, our weekly after-church lunch venue, we were approached by a middle-aged man from our congregation, who inquired about why we left the church without going to the sermon - at which point I took it upon myself to inform him that two conditions largely dictated our church-going: our ability to go to the Sanctuary service (we like the traditional music better than the contemporary music) and whoever is preaching at that time. As I was explaining this, I woke up.
I told her that her plan sounded good, and she continued on to her car and drove back the way I had come. I entered the cafe of the bookstore and took a seat at one of the tables in the center of the room. It wasn't busy at all that day; in fact, there was only one group of around five people in the room besides myself, and they were all congregated near the squashy armchairs near the window. Even the employees weren't stationed at their usual spots behind the counter. I sat uneasily, wondering what was going on. Eventually, the group over by the armchairs approached my table, and the surly man who looked to be in charge started questioning me about where I lived and other things; I told him that it was none of his business, and he responded by drawing out a knife. I was presently tied up by the man and his company, gagged with a piece of cloth, carried out to the parking lot, and thrown in the back of a truck. The truck drove around for a very long time, until, when I was finally pulled from the truck, I could tell that we were in the mountains or somewhere else far out in the wilderness. I was tied to a chair in this decadent shack, and then my kidnappers left the room. I was terrified, because I knew that there was probably no chance that my parents would find me - and my purse had been left at the bookstore, so there was no way of calling the police (there was no telephone in the shack either). However, after what may have been several hours or several days, I heard a commotion outside, and suddenly, my dad stormed into the shack, untied me, ungagged me, and pulled me to my feet, on which I was unsteady, having been tied to a chair for a long period of time. I was just about to ask my dad how he had found me when he shushed me, saying, "We have to hurry; the people outside scattered when I showed up, and I don't know where they are." As we ran back outside to his car, my dad called the police from his cell phone and informed them of our situation, describing each of the kidnappers in detail. It was night, and we quickly hopped in the car and began to drive away through rolling hills and on dirt roads which winded through forests. Though we were escaping, the anxiety of the dream had not been lifted - for the criminals could, at any time, emerge from the trees on either side of the road and sabotage our vehicle, and they had more people in their group than we did, and more weapons. It was about at this point that I woke up.
The last dream, which I had the night after the dream described above, was very short. I dreamt that my dad and I were driving to church one morning, and as we pulled up outside of the Sanctuary, we saw advertised on the plaque by the door that an intern pastor would be preaching that morning. My dad, upon seeing this, veered immediately from the parking lot and drove off. He said that he didn't want to go unless our senior pastor was preaching. Owing to the fact that I also prefer the senior pastor's sermons and to the fact that I was in the passenger seat, I didn't argue. As we pulled into the parking lot of Mr. Waffle, our weekly after-church lunch venue, we were approached by a middle-aged man from our congregation, who inquired about why we left the church without going to the sermon - at which point I took it upon myself to inform him that two conditions largely dictated our church-going: our ability to go to the Sanctuary service (we like the traditional music better than the contemporary music) and whoever is preaching at that time. As I was explaining this, I woke up.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Antisocial Poet Man and Musings over Gelato
Today, in order to have an informal end-of-9th-grade celebration, my friend Saoirse came over around 2:00 to hang out. We planned to go see the "Clash of the Titans" remake at the $2 theater that night, which we did (my dad thought that it was cheesy, but Saoirse and I liked it all right; one of the main characters, we're pretty certain, was the actress who played Violet Baudelaire in the Series of Unfortunate Events movie). When she initially came over, my mother took us all out to lunch at Pancho Villas, a small restaurant off of Stratford Road which is quicky becoming my favorite Mexican restaurant. After being dropped back off at my dad's house, we hung around for a bit, played the piano, and then embarked on a mission to purchase the delicious gelato, which is made and sold by a super-nice lady on the opposite side of the park.
The journey itself was not necessarily a treacherous one, despite the heat and the fact that we had Lancy in tow, a dog who cannot pass any grass without sniffing it to obtain all record of life that passed over the spot. However, once we reached Reynolda Road (I think it was Reynolda - it was whatever road the actual gelato place is on), we remembered that it was indeed rush hour, and that the greedy business men driving by were intent on preventing us from crossing the road to our destination. After about 20 minutes of peering nervously around the parked cars at the oncoming stream of cars, we were finally able to run across the street, glaring at a man in a red car who seemed to be trying to speed up to pass by us before we made it all the way across. Fortunately, he didn't accomplish his task, for we would have then been stranded in the middle of the street as the flow of cars behind him continued. In any case, we entered the restaurant and ordered our gelato, deciding that we would walk back across the street to a shady place on the edge of the park, where we noticed a rather attractive man scribbling in his notebook on a park bench. We waited about 20 more minutes before we were able to cross the street in the shadow of a man who was carrying furniture to his car on the opposite side of the road. As we made it to safety, he said, "You finally made it across!" and I said, "Thanks to you! Have a great day." Then, Saoirse, Lancy, and I took seats on one of the benches which surrounded a large garden of red flowers, all organized into neat, mesmerizing rows. The man took no notice of us and continued to pour out his heart in writing. Saoirse mouthed, "I think he's writing poetry." and I nodded, thinking that the intensity of his concentration as he bent nearly double over his journal made that explanation quite plausible. We continued to watch him idly in his work, conversing about various things as we did so; I had a feeling that he would eventually storm away in frustration because we were interrupting his work, but surprisingly, he remained in the same position the entire time that we were present - it was after about half an hour that we finally decided that it was time to take Lancy back home, due to the fact that the longer we were out, the more he would probably suffer in the heat with his thick Siberian Husky fur. Walking to and from the gelato place, on and off, Saoirse and I discussed that favorite topic of teenage girls: the ideal male. However, through our conversation (and through simple observation), I believe I've decided that the male species (as well as the human species in general) is a variable, capricious one, and that I'm content to be enamored of the constance of music, at least for now. It is a much simpler solution than that of trying to bat one's way through the storm of hormones which whirl us through this Kansas plain of adolescence. As long as I can still play the piano on a mediocre level and make occasional "Wizard of Oz" allusions when elaborating on the effects of hormones, I shall be satisfied.
The journey itself was not necessarily a treacherous one, despite the heat and the fact that we had Lancy in tow, a dog who cannot pass any grass without sniffing it to obtain all record of life that passed over the spot. However, once we reached Reynolda Road (I think it was Reynolda - it was whatever road the actual gelato place is on), we remembered that it was indeed rush hour, and that the greedy business men driving by were intent on preventing us from crossing the road to our destination. After about 20 minutes of peering nervously around the parked cars at the oncoming stream of cars, we were finally able to run across the street, glaring at a man in a red car who seemed to be trying to speed up to pass by us before we made it all the way across. Fortunately, he didn't accomplish his task, for we would have then been stranded in the middle of the street as the flow of cars behind him continued. In any case, we entered the restaurant and ordered our gelato, deciding that we would walk back across the street to a shady place on the edge of the park, where we noticed a rather attractive man scribbling in his notebook on a park bench. We waited about 20 more minutes before we were able to cross the street in the shadow of a man who was carrying furniture to his car on the opposite side of the road. As we made it to safety, he said, "You finally made it across!" and I said, "Thanks to you! Have a great day." Then, Saoirse, Lancy, and I took seats on one of the benches which surrounded a large garden of red flowers, all organized into neat, mesmerizing rows. The man took no notice of us and continued to pour out his heart in writing. Saoirse mouthed, "I think he's writing poetry." and I nodded, thinking that the intensity of his concentration as he bent nearly double over his journal made that explanation quite plausible. We continued to watch him idly in his work, conversing about various things as we did so; I had a feeling that he would eventually storm away in frustration because we were interrupting his work, but surprisingly, he remained in the same position the entire time that we were present - it was after about half an hour that we finally decided that it was time to take Lancy back home, due to the fact that the longer we were out, the more he would probably suffer in the heat with his thick Siberian Husky fur. Walking to and from the gelato place, on and off, Saoirse and I discussed that favorite topic of teenage girls: the ideal male. However, through our conversation (and through simple observation), I believe I've decided that the male species (as well as the human species in general) is a variable, capricious one, and that I'm content to be enamored of the constance of music, at least for now. It is a much simpler solution than that of trying to bat one's way through the storm of hormones which whirl us through this Kansas plain of adolescence. As long as I can still play the piano on a mediocre level and make occasional "Wizard of Oz" allusions when elaborating on the effects of hormones, I shall be satisfied.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Last Day of School and Dream about the Killer Sea Monster
So, today was the last day of school, marked ironically with the last and least rigorous of my exams: Seminar of the Arts, the exam consisting of the Cultural Languages, Creative Writing, and Careers in the Arts portions of our course. Naturally, I finished within an hour; and the only reason that I took that amount of time was that I insisted on checking over each answer to make sure that, in my speed, I hadn't skipped a question or recorded an answer incorrectly on the sheet. After the test, I was well occupied with a Jodi Picoult book that Ms. Jones is allowing me to borrow over the summer, entitled Change of Heart, which deals with, in the tradition of Jodi Picoult books, a controversial issue in modern society, which in this case is the death penalty. Owing to the fact that her books are famous for being page-turners, I find that I'm already about seventy pages into it (which is a lot for me; I'm a notoriously slow reader). In any case, Ms. Jones offered to let me borrow it in the first place because I had lent her my Carson McCullers autobiography and she wanted to exchange a book of her own so that we could have the summer to read the selections. Likewise, I'm hoping that Harrison, a fellow classmate, utilizes his time over the summer to read The Grapes of Wrath, which I lent him in a spurt of spreading-the-awesomeness-of-John-Steinbeck passion a few months ago, and which he started to read a week ago. It has been rather amusing, because over the past few months, I've asked him at least three times if he's started to read it, simply because I'm nerdy and I was curious as to what he thinks of it, and how he thinks it compares to Of Mice and Men; however, whenever I asked him this, he seemed to think that I was prompting him to hurry up and return the book, though I assured him otherwise multiple times. After the second occurrence of this, I decided not to ask him again until just before the summer, when he delivered the news that he had finally started to read it, but that he had gotten stuck in the introduction - at which point I exclaimed, "Who reads the introduction anyways, Harrison?! I didn't!" and he seemed relieved, admitting that after trudging through ten pages of the introduction, he had decided to skip it.
So anyways, around 11:30 or 12:00, the bell released us for a brief lunch period, half of which I spent hanging out with Elizabeth Bell, McKinley, and Jordan and eating a cosmic brownie and pack of Smiles, the other half of which I spent gathering things from my locker and delivering my lock and its combination (for the purpose of nostalgia: 13-31-9) to the main office as Ms. Parise wasn't in her room. After doing this, I carried the accumulation of binders and such from my locker back to the picnic tables, where I contacted my mother, beseeching her to come and rescue me from the awful heat (it must have been at least 90 degrees today). Eventually, since Kalyn's addition to the family hinders the speed of any sort of last-minute plan, I was shooed to the opposite side of the street, where we were officially off-campus; the other students who weren't fortunate enough to have rides were herded to various locations within the building. I called my mom again after a few minute to alert her to my change of position, and to ask if she was almost there because it was still quite hot outside - she responded that she was just coming up on Five Points and should be arriving outside of my school any minute. This she did, and after being hugged by Elizabeth and the other two girls (whom I really only know through Elizabeth and sharing their driver's ed class; I still have to take my in-car), I loaded my stuff into the trunk and climbed into the passenger seat. My mom and I had our lunch at the new Mario's near my dad's house, and then she dropped me off at my dad's house, where I walked the Baby, played the "Adagio" of the "Tempest," and the beginning of the third movement of the "Moonlight," and slept on my dad's bed with the dog and the cat for an hour or so.
The rest of the evening passed in a typical, non-eventful manner until I decided to scout around on the Internet for some Proust, which I've been meaning to do anyway. I found a free e-book type thing of his masterpiece, A la recherche du temps perdu, I believe it is called (Search for Lost time). This particular site that I found had both the English translation and the French original, and so I initially pulled up the French and started to figure my way through it, as with a mathematical equation, but I could tell that there were beautiful things - extravagant, luscious similes and metaphors - that I was missing with my limited vocabulary. So, after struggling through a few paragraphs in this manner, I pulled up the English version in a different window and began to read the translation; it was beautiful, and very relatable. The part that I read dealt with his memories of sleeping when he was a boy, about how he would often fall asleep reading and then be unable to separate himself from the "subjects" of his literature - they would mold inevitably into his dreams. He discussed his dreams of women - saying that, just as Eve was created from the rib of Adam, so these women radiated from his sleeping form, so that when he awoke, there would be moments of the dream's memory in which his body was still conformed to accept the shape of the woman's and the warmth of her kiss was still upon his cheek. In any case, I could go on about some of the details of that and other paragraphs, but my point is that I was awed by the beauty of his prose, in the original text and in the translation - I shall have to find a hard copy of it with the translation so that I can similarly read my way through both.
So, I long have rambled, and I'm sure that most of you who have come to read this entry are more interested in the dream involving the killer sea monster which was referenced in the title; actually, you probably are not, since I just had a conversation with my dad which went like this:
My dad: So, who're you chatting with on there?
Robyn: No one. I'm blogging. Oh, by the way, did I tell you about this crazy dream that I had the other night where there was this guy who could turn into a sea monster and - ?
My dad (nodding): Yes. . .You did.
Robyn: I did? Really? I don't remember telling you.
My dad (backing towards the stairs, grabbing the vacuum cleaner): Well, you did.
Robyn: Are you just saying that so you can avoid hearing the dream?
My dad: . . .Yes.
In any case, whether you are looking forward to it or not, here is the dream. I lived in a large beach-house with a group of many other people which contained my parents, my mom's friend Lalanea, and her daughter Xiola. It was our job (the job of everyone in the house) to look after one individual who was confined to the house with us: a convicted murderer, who was "insane in the membrane," and who could transform into a giant, blue, rainbow-striped sea monster at will. This man, who was really not insane but had an insatiable urge to kill, was known for targeting women particularly, so he did have some method to his supposed madness - the supposed madness being the reason that he wasn't in a prison somewhere. The beach house was like a sort of half-way house, in that he was expected to eventually recover from his "madness" while under our supervision. In any case, now that I'm awake, I realize that it was rather silly to try to restrain this man from killing people when we were so close to the ocean where he could easily utilize his transformation powers. Many mornings found Xiola and I, who were on the midnight-to-morning watch shift of the maniac, running down the beach to the water, where we could see some unfortunate early-morning swimmer struggling to paddle to shore as the silhouette of the escaped sea monster rose up, towering, behind them. This happened multiple times, and we were chastised by the other members of the beach house most severely.
"What if he ran off one time during the night?" one woman asked us, "Then we'd be in even deeper trouble; we can't just let him go around, destroying everything in his path - he needs to stay here for his rehabilitation - each time you let him kill, you're reminding him of what he's missing from his old life."
Yet, the murderer returned each time, as would an obedient dog. Of course, we were unable to tackle a gigantic sea monster to the beach and drag him back inside the house; we had to wait. But, before midafternoon, we would always find our cold-blooded murderer asleep in his bed upstairs, often without noticing him enter the house in the first place.
After establishing this routine, there came a night when Xiola and I, upon tip-toeing up to his bedroom on the top floor, found his bed to be empty once again. However, we knew something was amiss almost right away: while we could generally hear the screams of the swimmers being attacked from his window or the splashing sounds of his large, serpentine body flailing around in the ocean, we could hear nothing this night. It was eerily quiet, and it seemed that our fellow boarder's prediction may have come true: our murderer might have finally escaped the lot completely.
First, however, before we jumped to conclusions, we had to search the house for the killer and any "trophies" that he may have taken into the house with him (his victims). We exited the room and entered the long, long hallway outside of it, lined on either side by doors, most of which were cracked and contained the other sleeping boarders of the house. We walked down this hallway, checking in each room for the murderer and his kill - it was an intense walk, not knowing where he might be or whether or not he might be in a state of mind provoking him to kill us if we found him. It was around this time that I woke up.
So anyways, around 11:30 or 12:00, the bell released us for a brief lunch period, half of which I spent hanging out with Elizabeth Bell, McKinley, and Jordan and eating a cosmic brownie and pack of Smiles, the other half of which I spent gathering things from my locker and delivering my lock and its combination (for the purpose of nostalgia: 13-31-9) to the main office as Ms. Parise wasn't in her room. After doing this, I carried the accumulation of binders and such from my locker back to the picnic tables, where I contacted my mother, beseeching her to come and rescue me from the awful heat (it must have been at least 90 degrees today). Eventually, since Kalyn's addition to the family hinders the speed of any sort of last-minute plan, I was shooed to the opposite side of the street, where we were officially off-campus; the other students who weren't fortunate enough to have rides were herded to various locations within the building. I called my mom again after a few minute to alert her to my change of position, and to ask if she was almost there because it was still quite hot outside - she responded that she was just coming up on Five Points and should be arriving outside of my school any minute. This she did, and after being hugged by Elizabeth and the other two girls (whom I really only know through Elizabeth and sharing their driver's ed class; I still have to take my in-car), I loaded my stuff into the trunk and climbed into the passenger seat. My mom and I had our lunch at the new Mario's near my dad's house, and then she dropped me off at my dad's house, where I walked the Baby, played the "Adagio" of the "Tempest," and the beginning of the third movement of the "Moonlight," and slept on my dad's bed with the dog and the cat for an hour or so.
The rest of the evening passed in a typical, non-eventful manner until I decided to scout around on the Internet for some Proust, which I've been meaning to do anyway. I found a free e-book type thing of his masterpiece, A la recherche du temps perdu, I believe it is called (Search for Lost time). This particular site that I found had both the English translation and the French original, and so I initially pulled up the French and started to figure my way through it, as with a mathematical equation, but I could tell that there were beautiful things - extravagant, luscious similes and metaphors - that I was missing with my limited vocabulary. So, after struggling through a few paragraphs in this manner, I pulled up the English version in a different window and began to read the translation; it was beautiful, and very relatable. The part that I read dealt with his memories of sleeping when he was a boy, about how he would often fall asleep reading and then be unable to separate himself from the "subjects" of his literature - they would mold inevitably into his dreams. He discussed his dreams of women - saying that, just as Eve was created from the rib of Adam, so these women radiated from his sleeping form, so that when he awoke, there would be moments of the dream's memory in which his body was still conformed to accept the shape of the woman's and the warmth of her kiss was still upon his cheek. In any case, I could go on about some of the details of that and other paragraphs, but my point is that I was awed by the beauty of his prose, in the original text and in the translation - I shall have to find a hard copy of it with the translation so that I can similarly read my way through both.
So, I long have rambled, and I'm sure that most of you who have come to read this entry are more interested in the dream involving the killer sea monster which was referenced in the title; actually, you probably are not, since I just had a conversation with my dad which went like this:
My dad: So, who're you chatting with on there?
Robyn: No one. I'm blogging. Oh, by the way, did I tell you about this crazy dream that I had the other night where there was this guy who could turn into a sea monster and - ?
My dad (nodding): Yes. . .You did.
Robyn: I did? Really? I don't remember telling you.
My dad (backing towards the stairs, grabbing the vacuum cleaner): Well, you did.
Robyn: Are you just saying that so you can avoid hearing the dream?
My dad: . . .Yes.
In any case, whether you are looking forward to it or not, here is the dream. I lived in a large beach-house with a group of many other people which contained my parents, my mom's friend Lalanea, and her daughter Xiola. It was our job (the job of everyone in the house) to look after one individual who was confined to the house with us: a convicted murderer, who was "insane in the membrane," and who could transform into a giant, blue, rainbow-striped sea monster at will. This man, who was really not insane but had an insatiable urge to kill, was known for targeting women particularly, so he did have some method to his supposed madness - the supposed madness being the reason that he wasn't in a prison somewhere. The beach house was like a sort of half-way house, in that he was expected to eventually recover from his "madness" while under our supervision. In any case, now that I'm awake, I realize that it was rather silly to try to restrain this man from killing people when we were so close to the ocean where he could easily utilize his transformation powers. Many mornings found Xiola and I, who were on the midnight-to-morning watch shift of the maniac, running down the beach to the water, where we could see some unfortunate early-morning swimmer struggling to paddle to shore as the silhouette of the escaped sea monster rose up, towering, behind them. This happened multiple times, and we were chastised by the other members of the beach house most severely.
"What if he ran off one time during the night?" one woman asked us, "Then we'd be in even deeper trouble; we can't just let him go around, destroying everything in his path - he needs to stay here for his rehabilitation - each time you let him kill, you're reminding him of what he's missing from his old life."
Yet, the murderer returned each time, as would an obedient dog. Of course, we were unable to tackle a gigantic sea monster to the beach and drag him back inside the house; we had to wait. But, before midafternoon, we would always find our cold-blooded murderer asleep in his bed upstairs, often without noticing him enter the house in the first place.
After establishing this routine, there came a night when Xiola and I, upon tip-toeing up to his bedroom on the top floor, found his bed to be empty once again. However, we knew something was amiss almost right away: while we could generally hear the screams of the swimmers being attacked from his window or the splashing sounds of his large, serpentine body flailing around in the ocean, we could hear nothing this night. It was eerily quiet, and it seemed that our fellow boarder's prediction may have come true: our murderer might have finally escaped the lot completely.
First, however, before we jumped to conclusions, we had to search the house for the killer and any "trophies" that he may have taken into the house with him (his victims). We exited the room and entered the long, long hallway outside of it, lined on either side by doors, most of which were cracked and contained the other sleeping boarders of the house. We walked down this hallway, checking in each room for the murderer and his kill - it was an intense walk, not knowing where he might be or whether or not he might be in a state of mind provoking him to kill us if we found him. It was around this time that I woke up.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Yesterday: French and Music
Here are a few of my favorite things! Haha, yesterday was one of the best days that I've had in a while - I was worrying about it initially because the French and Band exams were both happening that day and I was somewhat worried about my results from the exams. Madame Matisko gave us our writing and speaking prompts ahead of time, which was awesome, because it gave me the oppurtunity to memorize forty seconds of speaking over the weekend. I spent most of this weekend speaking to myself in French about what I plan to do this summer. Among other things, I discuss in the speaking prompt my plans to ride my bike, walk my dogs, go to classical music concerts to have a good view, visit my family in Naples, play Scrabble with my grandmother, and of course (bien sur) to work on the piano and trumpet. For the first time in my existence, I received a 100 on the speaking portion of the exam. I don't know how I performed on the rest of the test yet, but the listening portion, which I was worried about, was fairly easy and I think that I may have gotten a 100 on that also. The band exam was stressful simply because of my name's location in the alphabet - I have so much time to sit and worry and stress myself out before I even get the chance to play - I'm one of those "let's-just-get-it-over-with" people, but it's hard to have this sort of personality when your last name begins with a "W."
In any case, after I played, Mr. James told me that I got an A on my performance, about which I was quite pleased, considering I messed up at least three times. Overjoyed with my success, I joined Heather and another flute player outside for a game of Egyptian Rat Screw (which is a card game). Eventually, Ernest came outside also and slapped his way into the game before declaring that he was going to loiter in Dr. Moss's room for a while and play the piano. Then, when Mr. Small came by and forced us to sit on the cards (because we weren't entirely sure that we were supposed to be in possession of them), I followed Ernest over to Dr. Moss's room, wanting to play the piano myself. Sure enough, he was in there, and he allowed us to play. I started with the Introduction of the "Pathetique" Sonata, played all the way through the "Adagio Cantabile" section, moved on to Mozart's "K. 545," then through what I could remember from the "Tempest" Sonata of Beethoven, and some other pieces. After a while, Dr. Moss gave me some advice - for one thing, I am overly-Romantic (or in other words, the pedal is my crutch). My grandfather has told me this before, so I was not surprised - also, I need to bring out the melody with my right hand more, and my issue with that, I think, is partially that I like the sound of the lower notes a bit better than the higher ones, and so I subconsciously pound with my left and ignore my right almost completely. And last, I need to work on the strength of my pinkies, because they are weak and cannot carry the melody efficiently. It was a very productive hour-or-so that I spent in the room, and Dr. Moss suggested that I practice the third movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata so that I might increase the agility of my hands. I printed that out yesterday and I've started to learn it, though I don't know if I shall ever get it up to the speed at which I've just heard it played on Youtube. It's insanely difficult and amazing. All in all, yesterday was awesome. Last night, I went with my dad to Harris Teeter to purchase bouquets of flowers for my teachers, and I made two cd's, one for Mr. James and the other for Dr. Findeis, since I figured that it would be awkward to buy male teachers flowers. As I had no exam today, I spent the morning traveling around and distributing the gifts, spending about an hour in Ms. Jones' room conversing about various books and such. After that, I spent some time in Dr. Moss's room, practicing the third movement of the "Moonlight" and the second movement of Bach's sonata for piano and violin (number 4, I think). At lunch, I called my mother and asked her to come and rescue me, as I had no other reason to stay for the remainder of the day - she, Wesley, the baby, and I went out to lunch at Pancho Villas, and then she dropped me back off at my dad's house.
In any case, after I played, Mr. James told me that I got an A on my performance, about which I was quite pleased, considering I messed up at least three times. Overjoyed with my success, I joined Heather and another flute player outside for a game of Egyptian Rat Screw (which is a card game). Eventually, Ernest came outside also and slapped his way into the game before declaring that he was going to loiter in Dr. Moss's room for a while and play the piano. Then, when Mr. Small came by and forced us to sit on the cards (because we weren't entirely sure that we were supposed to be in possession of them), I followed Ernest over to Dr. Moss's room, wanting to play the piano myself. Sure enough, he was in there, and he allowed us to play. I started with the Introduction of the "Pathetique" Sonata, played all the way through the "Adagio Cantabile" section, moved on to Mozart's "K. 545," then through what I could remember from the "Tempest" Sonata of Beethoven, and some other pieces. After a while, Dr. Moss gave me some advice - for one thing, I am overly-Romantic (or in other words, the pedal is my crutch). My grandfather has told me this before, so I was not surprised - also, I need to bring out the melody with my right hand more, and my issue with that, I think, is partially that I like the sound of the lower notes a bit better than the higher ones, and so I subconsciously pound with my left and ignore my right almost completely. And last, I need to work on the strength of my pinkies, because they are weak and cannot carry the melody efficiently. It was a very productive hour-or-so that I spent in the room, and Dr. Moss suggested that I practice the third movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata so that I might increase the agility of my hands. I printed that out yesterday and I've started to learn it, though I don't know if I shall ever get it up to the speed at which I've just heard it played on Youtube. It's insanely difficult and amazing. All in all, yesterday was awesome. Last night, I went with my dad to Harris Teeter to purchase bouquets of flowers for my teachers, and I made two cd's, one for Mr. James and the other for Dr. Findeis, since I figured that it would be awkward to buy male teachers flowers. As I had no exam today, I spent the morning traveling around and distributing the gifts, spending about an hour in Ms. Jones' room conversing about various books and such. After that, I spent some time in Dr. Moss's room, practicing the third movement of the "Moonlight" and the second movement of Bach's sonata for piano and violin (number 4, I think). At lunch, I called my mother and asked her to come and rescue me, as I had no other reason to stay for the remainder of the day - she, Wesley, the baby, and I went out to lunch at Pancho Villas, and then she dropped me back off at my dad's house.
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