Mahler's 8th Symphony at Carnegie Hall

Right now I’m at Carnegie in the choral dress room. It’s four. Rehearsal ended around one and then I went to eat at a diner with some members of the chorus. I ordered pancakes. I don’t even really like pancakes (I know that to many ears this is blasphemous, but I had my first one freshman year of college, and blini and oladushki are significantly tastier, in my humble opinion.)

Last night we were at the Riverside Church rehearsing, and we got out around six and then I met up with Liza. She showed me from the street which window was her dorm room. We got Korean food together and we were both exhausted beyond our wits. Still, it was nice to see her.

 

Then I got to Kostya’s apartment somewhere near 1^st Ave and 14^th St, where I stayed the night. We had tea and talked and he practiced a presentation he has to do today on me and then I fell asleep.

Maybe this is why I didn’t last very long in NYC; I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall asleep. I watched the light in the window come and brighten. I dreamt that I was in a glass botanical garden, and a family lived there and then suddenly there was a ball there. But the girls were trying too hard and the guys just wanted to get high. We were trying at something that wasn’t going to happen. It was awfully realistic.

--

We got back to Bard a little after one in the morning.

After the diner I wandered off, turning onto whatever street looked most interesting, photographing. I bought some licorice and then found a fountain on the same block. It was such a pretty open space, and the rush of water blocked out NYC but for some reason the glory was fleeting, and soon I found myself back in the choral rehearsal room, where I had napped and started writing and talking to members of the Collegiate Chorale.

The concert went well, but everyone at Bard was more than slightly disappointed to see that we weren’t even mentioned in the playbill, while the Brooklyn Youth Choir was listed in full, though they sang a tenth of the time we did. It didn’t bring up moral to get those half an hour before we were to go out.

The licorice is delicious, I still have some left.

Teaching Fellow

But now I am back at Bard, full of anorexic boys and girls with bouncy walks.


I just got back from buying more watercolor paper and tights with Emma and Lauren.

Before the break I made pancakes with Kalena at 11pm and attended a teaching fellow's event. The one for Manor Annex and Proper is Walter Mead, who is apparently fairly well known and meets famous people and been published in big journals and has been kissed by Yasser Arafat. The talk was on being a public intellectual, and he was somewhat entertaining, but my ambitions hardly lie in the area of political writing. Also, he is less of a conversationalist and more of a lecturer. Still, there was apple cider (and okay cake.) Marina van Zuylen's event freshman year had been better. We had discussed boredom and the cakes provided were truly fantastic.


Sumdedah and I made it to the burrito stand last Friday the day before it ended its season, and Wednesday I went over to lahl's house (lila amanda hallie and lia) and wrote.

But other than that, it's work work work. The most tangible bit is that last Friday I read all of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse in one day for history class. There has been a band, a theater company, a film, and many other things inspired by the book, which is partially unique in that it was grossly misinterpreted by people who loved it while the author was still alive.

movies; The Third Man, with my parents over break.

good excuses

October Break was dearly needed (we had the 8th and 9th, so I had  a five day weekend, since I don't have class on Friday's).

I went home and saw my family. The day before I left we went apple picking along with Inka&co.
They gave us these sticks to get the apples, but we made a team: she climbed up the tree, I caught the apples she threw down. This photo was taken after we had collected a bag and caught up with our brothers.

 

When I came up for a weekend last time Shimon had overheard me say that I had a good excuse to come. He later told me he wanted me to have more good excuses. This break he spent most of his time trying to situate himself in my lap, but he doesn't quite fit like he used to.

I also went to Yulka's apartment in Boston. It's in a nice area walking distance to Newbury St (and also Emerson) so of course there it's four people living in two tiny rooms. They call it their shoebox. It's a pretty accurate description. We danced in the apartment before going to a party somewhere. The night ended with me yelling on the phone at some guy I don't know, and I wish I could have done more than yelled. The next day we had tea for breakfast and then made lunch. Somehow between all of this I also read half of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", adding to my list of books I have read half of. We walked to Newbury and sat at L'Aroma cafe and eaves dropped on a conversation and decided that the couple was not on a date but friends. 

I'm from MA

I am currently writing an essay for my child psych class on proposed changes to the DSM-IV TR; I feel like they have been coming out with the DSM V for ages. Specifically I am looking at Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). I almost started reading the psychopathy stuff again, but then I remembered it had to be applicable to children (psychopathy cannot be diagnosed in people under age 18).

And I just heard someone's phone buzzing in another room. These walls are thick but not insulated at all. Last year I could feel when the person in the room next to ours leaned up against the wall, but it was a quite dorm.
Really, I don't understand; one (or two?) of the guys in my hall get drunk and hang out with friends on the weirdest days. Sunday nights. Wednesday nights. Don't they class the next day? Or do all five or so people that gather have schedules that leave both Monday's and Thursday's free? Maybe it would be less annoying if I liked their choice in music...

sorry, complaining. I was running fever last night and most of today. I woke up in the middle of the dark and thought I was going to throw up until I dumped a mug of water on my head. It cooled me down enough to fall asleep. I reserve my right to complain today.

I got my absentee ballot for MA in the mail! First election I will be participating in ever, and both the Presidential elections and the MA senate elections are not too clear in terms of outcome. There are some questions I have no information on, like who to elect for sheriff. The ballot measures are intresting too (or you, know, some of them are). Here they are:

1) Right to Repair: A YES VOTE would enact the proposed law requiring motor vehicle manufacturers to allow vehicle owners and independent repair facilities in Massachusetts to have access to the same vehicle diagnostic and repair information made available to the manufacturers’ Massachusetts dealers and authorized repair facilities.
A NO VOTE would make no change in existing laws.

2) Death with Dignity:  A YES VOTE would enact the proposed law allowing a physician licensed in Massachusetts to prescribe medication, at the request of a terminally-ill patient meeting certain conditions, to end that person’s life.
A NO VOTE would make no change in existing laws.

3) Medical Marijuana: A YES VOTE would enact the proposed law eliminating state criminal and civil penalties related to the medical use of marijuana, allowing patients meeting certain conditions to obtain marijuana produced and distributed by new state-regulated centers or, in specific hardship cases, to grow marijuana for their own use.
A NO VOTE would make no change in existing laws.
 

черновик

I'm currently working on my first history essay. The rough draft (isn't черновик such a good word? I know it comes from черно but I always think of черви; worm-eaten version) that's due on Wednesday. I should also start studying for my first exam; child psych, on Thursday.

I have all that to do so of course I'm writing here. Alana and I and a friend of her's broke fast for Yom Kippur at Tastebudds. Adrienne came too. It  had been a while since I'd gotten off campus, except for  when I went to Redhook to go to the farmers market, only to find out it's on Saturdays, not Sundays.

Saturday I went to Tivoli to the street painting festival. They blocked off a street and used a paint-roller to make blocks of white and black, which were then drawn on with chalk pastels. I think what impressed me the most was the fact that all age groups came out. Little kids, pre-teens, teens, middle-aged and the those with more white in their hair. I tried to do work with Amanda and Lila at Murry's (mmm, food, simple grilled cheese and soup). After Amanda and I went back to her place, I had a headache and fell asleep on her bed for two hours. It rained soon after, and it was the full moon on Saturday.
When I was leaving from Tivoli, Amanda mourned the chalk drawing that were now becoming clouds of dust under the wheels of the trucks riding over them. "But imagine" I said "how pretty the rain first drops will be."

There was something going on at both Manor and Smog Saturday night, I barely stopped at either but many many other people did. Jeremy Gardner was right in his "How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love the Shuttle" article: the fact that the shuttle to Tivoli is less flexible has left Bard campus a more lively place. 

Common Fire

Oh also I watched Psycho with Hannah, there was a screening at Preston for some class. It really made an impression on her (as much as The Seventh Seal, now that's a big deal). She buried her face in my shoulder at some point, I held her until I figured it was safe for her to watch.
"you're cute" I told her.

And Clea visited Bard. She's supposed to be in India because she got a job there (she visited Shivalika and fell in love) but she's having visa problems so she dropped by Bard since she's still in the US.
It's been two weeks since and she's still having visa issues, so she's been working over Skype and doing very strange hours (working on India time).

Jack has been fairly absorbed by his political life, he even did a project over the summer which he wrote about . I visited him at the co-op he lives at, called Common Fire. It's mostly Bard students living there right now, but not exclusively, and the couple that started that specific one has moved on to another bigger project. One of the older guys, Tripp, said that there used to be more diversity in terms of age, and that two children have been born in the house. They've gotten a decent amount of recognition (especially for being green), but from my stand point: a lot of the stuff there is donated, so it's a nice mishmash of odd chairs, three refrigerators (they order food in bulk), and nonuniform kitchen ware (like at my house). The floors are wooden and the ceilings are high, the light is warm and the kitchen is very large. There's a wild cat they call Stealth who hang's out on their porch a lot, even though he fends for himself, and lives outdoors during the winter as well. They are out of the way, so they have a fair bit of land, and no neighbors and the parking is far from the house as well. They switch of on dinner duty, though for the day I came no one had signed up (a fluke). It was nice, though the location requires one to rely on a car for transportation.

Really, I'm here.

I am back at Bard, the land of chain smokers, sprinkled in anorexic girls and boys with bouncy walks. 

Social Stuff: This Friday I went to Smog with Amanda and Sumedah. There were a ton of people, but I left after an hour, a little after 12. Seriously though, so many people, many freshmen, it doesn’t matter.

Thursday I came over to Hannah’s dorm and we had dinner, after I had gone to the club fair and danced with Lila to help recruit for the Bard Science Journal (which I just signed up for) (this is where I got my face painted last post-by the art collective). At some other points in time various other similar things have happened; nail-painting and looking at peoples rooms before and after they were decorated.  

The weekend before that I went back to suburban Boston to photograph a family friend’s bar mitzvah party. I talked to a freshman on the train there, stayed a night in NYC with another family that was going to the bar mitzvah and then stayed a night at home after the party, bringing back to Bard a small suitcase full of stuff I forgot the first time around (travel mug, my neuroscience textbook…) The same family drove me back to NYC, we had lunch and then I took the subway->rail->bus back to Bard. 

The weekend before that I went to Amanda/Lila/Hallie's house in Tivoli for dinner, and then we went to Liz’s birthday party in Redhook, and some other party after that which had already died by the time we got there, we stayed for one song, which happened to be one I like (Crystallized by the XX).

I also went to the budget defense forum where clubs vied for more funds. I hadn’t gone to one before. This is how it works; first there are the friendly amendments. Clubs come up on stage (this was set up outdoors) and ask for money, saying what their purpose is and how much they are hoping to get. Other clubs will donate: “5 dollars from the boffing club” “20 dollars from the Bard belly-dancers collective”  “5 pounds from the half-naked lunch club” (yes, these are all real).  My favorite one of these came for the Bard Moderator (a semi-annual sexuality and body politics magazine that has writing, art, and photographs): “Two years ago the Bike Co-op donated 200$ to the Moderator in exchange for an alley-cat naked bike photo shoot. This photo shoot never happened. We now donate 15$ to uphold that contract” After that go the hostile amendments where club heads attack other clubs, saying they have too much money, and that that money should go to them (this actually didn’t last very long). 

Oh! also at the very start of the year I went to the Amanda Palmer and Grand Theft Orchestra show. It was fun, they even sang a song I know from when she was the Dresden Dolls.

trying to get used to being around people so much. even when I'm alone at Kline, it's still filled with faces I recognize from just being at such a secluded school.