Kyrie

Just spent 3.5 hours rehearsing for tomorrow.
the concert will be the chamber singers, the symphonic chorus, accompanied by the Hudson Valley philharmonic orchestra, plus four Bard grad students.
soloists are mostly from the chamber singers, plus the grad students.
James Bagwell is conducting us.
music is Haydn's Mass (his last piece, Harmoniemesse in B-flat major) and Mozarts Ave Verum Corpus (which is also his last piece, coinciding with Requiem and the Magic Flute)
The symphonic chorus is a few Bard students and a lot of old people. Since they were set behind us, they kept complaining that they couldn't see. It was kinda annoying. Yes, it's important to see the conductor, but we can't help that our generation is better fed and hasn't started shrinking yet, and that the chamber singers are a stronger group and therefore in the front. Yes, lady, I know I'm tall and that my hair is big. No, I can't do anything about it.
the stats study went pretty well yesterday. max couldn't come, but we got through chapter 1-5.
on a totally side note that I just want to mention amongst all this talk of music: went to another contemporaneous concert maybe like, a month ago? it was the last one of the year.

Wound-Up Whine

I'm just going to dump, so my head stops spinning:

 

Brain wound up like a coil in a...wind up toy I guess. I can't really think of anything good at the moment. I know I sound chirpy. And I know that even though I feel energetic, I didn't get much sleep, since I woke up because of my back last night. I pulled it during thanksgiving and had to scrounge around for pain killers and wait for them to kick in.

Thursday I went to a lecture, Friday I went to the Hessel Museum Library (new found work space: clean, quite, and a walk away so it makes me stay there) I wrote a page and half summer/response of extra credit and read some. Saturday night went to Manor for an ISO masquerade party I was asked to shoot. It was too much, maybe with the stress of everything else I have to do, for me to handle.

Yesterday I finished reading The Center Cannot Hold, which I was supposed to read before thanksgiving. I also caught up on my Soc. reading, and then realized at the end of class today that it was our last class ever (read: Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel)

Also chose and read a study for Adult Psych, since I have to write a summery and response on it for tomorrow. The article I chose is"Cognitive Responses to Failure and Success Relate Uniquely to Bipolar Depression Versus Mania"

tea with Jack and ate toblerone

tea with Rosette and Hannah and had chocolate.

Today I woke up, went to Soc, ate lunch, went to a mandatory-but-fairly-open hours to talk about my final photo assembly, went to stats.

plan for the rest of the day involves: Amanda and Lila (to the right of me in stast) and Maximilian and Lucas (to my left) and me all meeting up to do stats at 8. Chapter 1-6. 

So I'm doing my adult psych write up before then.

I have a chamber singing dress rehearsal for Haydn on Tuesday, the concert is at Sosnoff at 8pm on Wednesday. My written final for stats is on Saturday 1-4. 

Next week:

Monday my final paper for History of Soc is due.

Tuesday I have an exam (Schizophrenia, Mood Disorders, Substance Abuse) and a lab exam for stats

I think my final photo project is due Wed.

but first I need to eat and rest a little because otherwise I might crash and that would be, in so many words, not good.

breath. deep breaths.

I have to admit though, I kinda like the stress, I always feel a lot more productive. 

I enjoy being productive.

registration cont.

I have a tumblr now, by the way.

Adrienne and I finished off a fancy bottle of sparkling apple juice (fake campaign.) Which I cracked open after we finished registration.

also, this makes me feel a bit better:

CRN	SUBJ	CRSE #	CREDITS	PROFESSOR	STATUS	SCHEDULE
12085	ART	100 HT	4.000	Tivey	DENIED	T 6:30 pm- 9:30 pm
12330	PSY	204	4.000	Dunphy-Lelii	APPROVED	M W 10:10 am-11:30 am
12342	PSY	230	4.000	Scalzo	APPROVED	T R 11:50 am- 1:10 pm
12418	ART	107 LB2	4.000	Battle	APPROVED	R 1:30 pm- 4:30 pm
12446	MUS	108D	1.000	Bagwell	Pending	T R 4:40 pm- 6:40 pm

class non-schedule

Tiger Lilies where playing at DTR, wonderful and dance-encouraging as usual. 

It hasn't even been 5 hours since registration and I'm already fucked.

CRN	SUBJ	CRSE #	CREDITS	PROFESSOR	STATUS	SCHEDULE
12085	ART	100 HT	4.000	Tivey	DENIED	T 6:30 pm- 9:30 pm
12330	PSY	204	4.000	Dunphy-Lelii	Pending	M W 10:10 am-11:30 am
12342	PSY	230	4.000	Scalzo	APPROVED	T R 11:50 am- 1:10 pm
12418	ART	107 LB2	4.000	Battle	Pending	R 1:30 pm- 4:30 pm
12446	MUS	108D	1.000	Bagwell	Pending	T R 4:40 pm- 6:40 pm

Thanksgiving 2011

Frank Sinatra by Cake is stuck in my head courtesy of the drive back (Eames driving, Marty, Page and Kalena, same as on the way there. too many people for a two door car with two people who are claustrophobic but it was okay)

http://blackberry-sunset.tumblr.com/post/13391067033

because Yulka and I were in the same place and it was definitely not Bard either.

I came home and soon after Pasha and Sanya arrived then dinner and hugging and all that. It was good to see everyone. Pasha and I were permitted to go to Eloosha's house, under the condition that we return by 2am.

For thanksgiving we went to dinner at a friends house (yet another professor, yet again math, and yes at MIT.) It was good to see a friend that I haven't really seen in a while, though it was too chaotic to talk fully.

and then the next day I went with Mama and Sanya and my brothers to Walden pond. Then to Eloosha's house. Well, first a concert, and then the house and then a sleepover in the basement and going to bed at 5 am.

Eloosha's friend from Yale came too (Daniel), because he lives far far away and after Eloosha said that for thanksgiving about 80 Russian Jews descend on his house, Daniel decided he has to see it. But apparently despite the fact that the teens think they spend most of the time speaking in English, we don't. I didn't even realize it until Daniel responded to "Я скоро вернусь" with a "and was I supposed to understand that?" Also we play way more music than normal thanksgiving (and probably eat way less turkey.)

In the evening people split-a few went to a party, more went to a play at Central, I stayed and babysat Sima. We played pingpong. We played foozball. Kostya Vanya Pasha and I played set while Sima watched (though Sima did find a set himself too.) 

And I spent the last night (last night) at home again.and now I'm back. 

and that is a summery of this weekend. I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving!

Waverly

 I wrote this for June 22nd of this summer, for a writing project a few friends and I had (it died pretty quickly-we stopped responding to the prompts) This was the first prompt "Describe a place. Tell us how it smells, looks, feels, is, how does time work there, what was the first or last time you where there, how did you discover it ect. Associations you have with it, emotions, memories. You can go in all or none of these veins. You can go on a tangent, but in the end, I want to know the place." I will discuss my weekend in my next post-after I have taken my Adult Psychopathology Exam (tomorrow)

 

Waverly

I’d like to say "I’d never given it much thought before," because I like the way it sounds. It implies a sort of philosophical view and discovery: “I have not thought about it before, but now am willing to examine the full depth and beauty of this wonderful idea or thing and discover something that is ultimately life-changing.” But the truth is, I have. I’ve given it a lot more thought than would seem necessary to give a train station.

There are stagnant puddles that never seem to evaporate on the landings that break up the stairs to the rest of the town above. I am suspicious of these and avoid stepping in them, because the station smells slightly of urine, though I’ve never seen anyone pissing there and can’t imagine why anyone would.  To my knowledge, there are no homeless fellows that live down there; Belmont isn’t that kind of town. And since I have stood, on the platform, waiting, at 12:27 am, if there were any homeless people living there, I probably would have seen them. However, there is usually no one but me, or me and a friend who walked me there, and once or twice, me and a couple of teenagers makingout.

The conductors, of course, have a tendency to think that I was up to something, because there’s no good reason to be going home that late from Waverly to Kendal Green. And maybe rightly so, for it did gave me the independence a teenager from boring white suburbia wanted-a way to hang out with friends that lived a couple towns over, and a venue to photograph them, on the rooftop above the bench and stairs, at night. Fun, and maybe even possibly illegal (oh the thrill of barely doing anything wrong, ever!)

The walls are salmon pink, which is a much more interesting color than any of the other stations I get off at. Sometimes, if I stay the night and am waiting in the morning, I study the wall on my side of the tracks in greater detail: I can see the crackles, the orange sparks and red veins, and where the paint has been chipped away, the blue gray of the cement underneath.  On the opposite side, there are streaks of lighter pink (or…more accurately, they exist on both sides but I can see them more clearly from a distance,) formed from the greater flow of water due to the way the hand rail above is structured. The water collects on the metal rectangles, runs down to the corners, and washed down the wall. In two places this pattern is broken, where fresh paint has been applied to cover up graffiti. For a very long time it said “yoonder” on the left hand side of the station, underneath the road-bridge. More recently, in big letters, left to right, bottom down, above the roof that covers the stairs that go up, it said:

from     save

heaven me

                -which is one of those flexible things that can be interpreted by me for myself. I can think….here, this town, is my heaven. My haven from home, an accessible taste of independence for a person without a car, and here I am waiting for the train to save me from it and bring me to a good nights’ rest. Though somehow I seriously doubt that the writer meant anything like that.

                I don’t mind the drunk sports fans on some nights, but I do mind the throw up that is caused by them. I like eavesdropping on conversations, but I hate looking for a set of seats that’s empty and finding none. I don’t enjoy shelling out money to the conductor, but I like it when they don’t bother to come to collect the fare. The worst is though, when fresh snow is lying all around and still coming down, seeing the tracks are clean, and trying to convince myself that, maybe, perhaps, possibly, I have not missed the train, have not lost a sliver of independence, and don’t have to irritate my parents by asking them to disrupt their plans and pick me up after the last train has gone.That there is still a 'next train' coming to this pink, stinking platform.

Halloween 2011

Anna and I went trick or treating. 

In Redhook. Some of the people did not appreciate that. Some were nice. A little kid on his way to bed (in his pjs) thought Anna was a dragon. One of the houses had a nice family and a firepit. 

I didn't know until recently that Margaret has a tumbler. its me: here and here and i took this photo

and I was watching this and the guy with the banjo is studying to be a choral conductor so he conducts chamber singers sometimes.

I feel so special.

Also Mama: I appreciate the care package you sent me.

This is team Zissou. Minus Margaret. She was MIA :(