the reenchantment of the world

I was all dressed to jog when I looked out my window and saw needles of rain slanting past. Exasperated, I undressed and watched the rest of When In Rome, feeling guiltily entertained and unproductive. Romantic comedies have never been my thing (they make me feel too girly), but what's a guilty pleasure if it isn't unpleasant and dislikeable in some way?

After the movie, golden sunlight made the slick world glow outside, and I bounded back into my workout clothes and out the door. Everyone was putting out free stuff, and just as I nearly fell over myself noticing a narrow, asymmetrical two-story boat-shaped house on McGee, I stumbled upon a curbside box with all the colors of thread I'd been wanting for months, and a seal keychain and tennis balls and poster tape. I couldn't believe how useful it all was and stashed some into my back pocket, resolving to take the rest on the way home. As usual, I deliberately chose random streets I hadn't seen before and eventually wound my way through a charming Victorian-lined lane to the Ohlone Trail, where I discovered that there were two halves to the community garden, one of which I had never noticed. I turned around at Gilman, but not before wandering into a plant nursery and realizing I could buy all the garden things I'd been wanting here and wondering at the beautiful flowering kale and dreaming of having my own garden, built from scratch, a clean doorstep, and time to cook dinner every night. Fat chance, you tenure-dreaming academic, you.

Normally I avoid wide car-dominated streets like Sacramento, but on the way back I was drawn to an outdoor tent on the sidewalk that seemed to be exploding with wooden wares I couldn't quite identify from a distance. To my amazement, it was the birdhouse tent I've often driven past. The artist Michael introduced himself and invited me into the backyard. I picked my way through his garage, which was clearly a basement performing arts venue with an elaborate upright piano and bar, and up a steep flight of stairs where I found myself beneath the shade of trees in a bewildering maze of birdhouses, each so different from the rest. It was another world, right off that busy commuter thoroughfare--a world of debris-turned-magic. Amongst the rows was the birdhouse of my dreams: a chapel with a little belltower. Save that one for me, Michael (how you remind me of Paul and his loft-turned-performing-arts-center), until I have a chance to break open the piggybank and return for the Friday music!

As if this wasn't enough, after picking up the rest of the loot on McGee and doing another double-take at the nautical house I must have passed multiple times and never noted, I stumbled upon Helly Welly's lighting store. I was walking now to cool down and the storefront, past which I had driven so many times, issued a challenge to the greying sky with golden light and musical instrument lamps. Helly led me through a wonderland of clarinet lamps and chandeliers made with transparencies she'd created in 1970s performance art events.

I made the final leg home in twilight, when all the world holds its breath in anticipation of the night. Time comes to a standstill at twilight, and it seems that time could stay stopped forever, and yet twilight is the most fleeting and rapidly changing part of the day, yielding to dusk and then to darkness. I can't love it enough. I was regretting missing Berkeley Artisans Holiday Open Studios this weekend, but the open studios found me, as they often find wanderers.

thanksgiving

I made pie and matzo ball soup for the first time. I biked the Tunnel Road - Grizzly Peak - Centennial Drive loop to completion for the first time. It all proved way easier than I expected. If I had a vacation every month there might well be nothing left in the world to do for the first time.

shooting stars

Although my short-term memory is abysmal, I'm starting to realize I have a long-term subconscious calendar memory that's uncannily precise. I've suddenly remembered to look up people's birthdays only to find that it was their birthday that day. And tonight I suddenly thought to look up when the Leonid meteor shower, an event I only seem to remember once a year or less, was going to happen, and found that it peaked yesterday. Alas, no staying up late for me until my organ recital at St. John's is finally squared away this Sunday.

blast from the past

Last December, I ordered a bottle of Liefmans Goudenband from an online Irish retailer for my friend Sue in Dublin. Today, nine months later, I receive the receipt in the mail. It was processed by the Irish post on September 9, so it's not like it ended up in an obscure corner of a USPS facility. I wonder what series of events led to someone printing out and posting this old receipt via airmail to me.

I was much amused by the inclusion of the gift note on the receipt. It concluded, "Keep that bunny [Fionnuala] away from the beer or you might not have any left to drink!"

highway robbery i say!

Last year I confirmed my suspicion that ZARA marks up all its clothes by $5 or more in the US. But today I discovered the full extent of some of those markups. It seemed like a miracle: a classy high-waist black skirt I'd longed for in April was on sale in my size in July (what?!). Marked down from $39.99 to $19.99 ... what a steal!

Until I peeled off the layers of sale labels and discovered that it sold in the EU for 19.95 EUR retail price.

In the years after I returned from Belgium, I waited each year until I traveled to Europe to shop at ZARA. Then I started to think I was being absurd, especially as I now live so close to ZARA in the bay area. But apparently I had it right the first few times around. It also seems absurd that I only shop for shoes on the fourth floor of the Herald Square Macy's in NYC while living on the west coast, but the payoff in stylish comfort shoes that don't hurt my feet makes the whole absurd procedure almost logical.

Okay, I finished my essay. The Freudian uncanniness needs to stop. But no, now Hugh emails me with the fb profile of a girl in SY'11 who does indeed look uncannily like me. I guess the effects will take a while to wear off.

An hour of ring time at Harkness and white shrimp pie at Pepe's. Life is gooooooood.

Another uncanny double in my life. So uncanny I can't even write about it. Something to do with names. Hopefully, when this paper is over, I will be free of much more than just the weight of responsibility of scholarship.

double trouble

Further proof that I need to stop thinking about Freud as soon as possible: I went to the Media Center today to watch the VHS of Die Tote Stadt I'd requested from UCSD, and saw someone at another video cubby who looked almost exactly like a friend of mine. I gave him a big smile and a wave, then realizing my mistake, apologized and hastily sequestered myself at my assigned television.

Terrifying. What's next?

Das Unheimliche

"I don't read Freud anymore," Harold Bloom wheezed at our seminar at Yale, which only Harold Bloom could entitle How to Read Poetry. "The more I read back in my student days, the more Freudian slips I made, until my conversations were full of them! So I stopped reading Freud." Hanging on his every word, I duly noted his indirect warning in my notebook.

Yet even Bloom's injunction did not finally prevent me from approaching Freud from two directions this past semester. At Gail's suggestion, I read Freud's essay on the uncanny in order to frame my discussion of belfries and musical automata and their relationship to the supernatural, extraordinary, and violent. Starting on my second writing project with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's opera Die Tote Stadt with the uncanny on the brain, I began to think more about uncanny doubles. The protagonist, Paul, meets a dancer named Marietta--the spitting image of his beloved dead wife, Marie. The same singer plays both Marietta and Marie's ghost, and many directors take the opportunity to splash a proliferation of images of Marie (Paul fetishizes her portrait) across the stage, double other roles and other props, and even double the characters themselves (e.g. Willy Decker's production, shown above).

The more time I spend grappling with the uncanny, the more uncanny doubles have started to appear in my life. It began on the day I was to present the ideas structuring my paper to the seminar. To bolster my self-confidence, I donned the sole pink article of clothing in my wardrobe, a draped, caped McQ shirt that is my pride and joy and surely utterly unique in form and color. The other half of my H&L cohort appeared wearing a multilayer draped pink shirt--one of the only pink items in her closet.

After giving my presentation, I was duly informed by two classmates that a student of Carolyn Abbate had recently given a paper on the same stagings of Die Tote Stadt and highlighted the exact same scenes. (Thankfully, his argument was of a different nature and purpose.)

And today, Bruno informs me that my Doppelgänger is marching around Brussels: a Francophone girl several years my junior. Thank goodness we established that I am surely the evil twin, and she the boring one.

Doppelgängers and das Unheimliche are closing in on me. Why didn't I listen to my sage professor? Bloom knew what would happen to me all along. He foreshadowed it when he sent identical letters of recommendation to the Lizzy for myself and another student at the same time. For which I am still entirely grateful--what a splash we made, whoever we two were!

multitasking

It's been years (if ever) since I was able to listen to music and concentrate on my work. Particularly since Eastman, I've found it virtually impossible to not focus on the music playing when I'm trying to multitask.

On the eve of my MA exam, I find myself able to do it again. What has changed? The way I work, the way I pay attention, the depth of my attention, my attitude towards music, my disgust at continuing to labor past the satiation point? As I read and take notes, for chapters at a time I don't notice the music, and its occasional intrusion into my consciousness is proof that I'm not hearing it. This seems vaguely inappropriate for a musicologist, but also a most welcome skill when my life feels entirely too narrow, musically and otherwise.