Tangents

Today's subject line is from Bachelor's "Stay in the Car," which has been earworming me since I heard it on WXNP earlier this week.

Dance recommendation: Anna Morrissey's All Together Alone, a modern take on "Ebben? ne andrò lontana," which I've adored since playing viola for it eons ago. Up until May 29. Warning for light-sensitives: there is some strobe action in it.

I keep meaning to mention the Stay at Home Choir's recording of Christopher Tin's "Sogno di Volare," which I sang on. (I chose to participate audio-only on this one.)



A Catholic composer who had also been involved with "Sogno" contacted me via Instagram about joining the virtual choir for one of his recordings, so that's in my practice folder now. I've sat out most of this year's SAHC projects, but they're doing another run at Ode to Joy, this time with a new German text by Michael Köhlmeier, and there's no registration fee for this one. It's unclear if there will be a recording involved, nor can I make the first alto sectional, but I do not care -- any time I can spend with that piece will help me refuel.

Today I squeezed in two dance sessions -- one for a reel that will be shown at a UK folk festival in June, and Karen Arceneaux's Beginner Horton class with Ailey Extension, where we're learning a combination to Billie Eilish's "Lovely" that Karen choreographed with Mental Health Awareness Month in mind. My back and shoulder are not 100%, and I stepped on a splinter last night (ow!), and there's like forty hours of work to fit into the next fourteen, so I'm pleased with myself for showing up (on camera, even!) and staying more focused than not.

It's not all wine and roses here, but my roses are doing very well this year, and my mom-in-law brought two bottles of prosecco to lunch on Sunday, along with this bouquet:



What I served (for four people total):

deviled eggs

bacon jam balls on red pepper strips

cashews

pickled garlic

tortellini with shrimp in a radish-lemon-anchovy sauce (adapted from an Anita Lo recipe)

green beans seasoned with butter and raspberry balsamic vinegar

zucchini soufflé

almond layer cake from Sweet 16th

The next afternoon, the other two members of the museum editorial team came over for our production meeting. I made another plate of deviled eggs, the junior editor brought Russian tea cookies, and we collectively put away more cake while having ourselves a merry time and discussing at length All the Things Due.

A week ago, something decided to eat every mallow seedling in my back yard. It left the adjacent zinnia seedlings alone, and I hadn't spent too much time thinning out the mallows, so I was amused as well as annoyed: I mean, clearly it was a really tasty snack for the critter? It had even consumed the scraps I had pulled from the ground earlier that Friday.

Being slightly ridiculous, I had put some of the bigger thinnings in water in hopes of transplanting them, and by yesterday some of them had developed long plump roots, so they went into some of the dirt patches out front. Fingers crossed . . . This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/175706.html.

A couple of days ago, I went looking for photos of some of the Bikram postures, and came across a nifty guide (illustrated with colorful stick figures) produced by a NY studio.

(When I manage standing bow, it feels pretty cool. Then there's me getting water up my nose when I tried to sneak in a sip during savasana...)

I am taking a break from it today, though, because my body and brain both need a timeout -- a couple of old injuries have flared up, and I need a day where I don't have to be anywhere by x o'clock. (It's not really a day off -- I'm planning to divide 8-10 hours between lettering and copyediting -- but not having to stop to get myself ready to go somewhere else will make a difference. I'm such a housecat.)

Yesterday afternoon, I went to Rita Frizzell's memorial service. It included humor and drama and tears and quite a bit of music, including Sarah Dan Jones's "Meditation on Breathing" ("When I breathe in, I'll breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love"). The humor included Dawn Thornton referring to herself as "Buddish" (referring to her sort-of practice of meditation); the drama included a theatre director reading aloud passages from Hamlet and coming up with a new collective noun ("an incandescence of Ritas") to encompass the different facets of she-who-was-called-Rita. There was chanting from the Tibetan Book of the Dead; there was a colorful portrait of an eight-limbed goddess hanging behind the pulpit. There was a reference to "Tibetan Buddhism's glass ceiling for women" (one of the situations leading Rita to Unitarian Universalism) but also glowing descriptions of the Friday night sangha she led, which will be continued by another member of FUUN.

The closing song was a group rendition of "You Are My Sunshine," a song Rita's mother had sung many times to her. We sang through it three times, twice with the words ("Please don't take my sunshine away...") and once simply humming. Afterward, at least two people said to me, "The humming, that's what got me." Music is such a physical act.

After the reception, I hopped into a friend's car and she steered it downtown toward sushi. Sarge talked about her plans to make blackberry wine; B. and I chatted about our connections to Texas. There was a lot of laughing with and at each other, including me at S. when she declared "I'm too old to be butch" (when B. declined her offer to pump gas) and both S. and B. at me when I waxed enthusiastic about fantasy tennis and horse handicapping. ("Look, I'm a nerd. Therefore I have nerd hobbies." "We're glad you know that.")

Speaking of which: Thanks to an $7K bet on Oxbow and a $10K bet on Mylute, I am currently leading the Smarty Jones Stakes (a Triple Crown predictions contest) over at TalkAboutTennis.com. My penchant for humoring my hunches seldom pays out two races in a row, however; moreover, I've noticed that it's always a longshot I don't pick that ends up second. Still, for the moment, peppermints all around! ;-)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/51367.html.

Today's subject line is from Jane Hirshfield's Hope and Love. It is one of the pieces I am currently rehearsing for this Sunday's services. The other one is a lively setting of Emily Dickinson's "Hope Is the Thing with Feathers":



I've also been looking at various hymns set to "Charleston" (albeit wayyy slower than the midi at Hymnary). We sang the version that begins "There's a wideness in your mercy" (words by Frederick William Faber) at church not too long ago:


There's a wideness in your mercy like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in your justice which is more than liberty.

But we make your love too narrow by false limits of our own,
and we magnify your strictness with a zeal you will not own.

For the love of God is broader than the measures of our minds
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/45865.html.

The subject line's from Nikki Giovanni's "I am Jazz," which is in Bicycles: Love Poems, which I am reading tonight because my e-book loan expires in a couple of days.

I am cooking: "Company Carrots" (recipe from Charleston Receipts Repeats), a riff on parmesan black pepper coleslaw (because both parmesan and cabbage were on sale at the supermarket), and pork chops.

I am listening to TFS's "Blackest Crow," via Nathalie. Sxip Shirley: "The girls started singing 'The Blackest Crow' and it was like a mute volume hit the party. The party went SILENT and people listened to the women sing and it felt like that...LISTENING TO THE WOMEN SING."

Back to the stove, back to the knife, back to the pen and the paring life... ;-)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/44188.html.