Weekend adventures

Experimenting with the everyday:

Adventure was light this weekend. After work on Friday I stopped by Best Buy to pick up the fifth season of Golden Girls, then continued my walk home and practiced flute for an hour and a half or so. I'm working on a new Handel sonata that allows me to focus on tone and phrasing. (The Mozart concerto, Poulenc sonata, and Andersen etudes are still largely challenges for fingers, tongue, and embouchure.)

Later, I watched the first episode of the new Golden Girls and learned that Dorothy has chronic fatigue syndrome (a popular illness from the 80s, as a cynical coworker stated). It was a two-part episode. In the first half, Dorothy went from doctor to doctor, all of whom dismissed her illness as imaginary. In the second half, she was vindicated by her neighbor, the doctor from Empty Nest. ("I have an illness, and it has a NAME!") I also watched (with Skye) an embarrassingly dreadful sci-fi movie by Peter Hyams, in which time travelers fiddle with the past, leading to the evolutionary success of a baboon-hyena-dinosaur hybrid. Then I read some of the Eckhart Tolle book my aunt gave me and fell asleep at about 10:30, which led to . . .

. . . my waking up very early on Saturday. I grabbed coffee from across the street and began working on French songs for Alain; we're adding new literature after the fun music party last weekend, where he and I performed several Debussys and a Duparc and Gail and I performed a Mozart violin-piano sonata (great fun on Alain's Yamaha grand). The new music (especially Duparc's "Testament") was not sinking in, so I transitioned to the new Beethoven violin-piano sonata, even though Gail and I will most likely spend our Thursday playing for dinner patrons at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley instead of rehearsing.

B. and his friend L. were in the neighborhood for yoga and called to see if I wanted to join them for a late lunch. I did; there was light friction on both sides because I had been on guard since B.'s self-protective post-whoopy coldness Thursday night and because B. "went crazy for a minute" imagining that I was making whoopy with someone else when I didn't answer the phone the night before (because I went to sleep at 10:30). Ah, dating. I've no business dating—but I don't want to stop. B. and I made our peace and parted so that he could prepare for his concert that night, which . . .

. . . was lovely, especially the short trio he sang at the beginning, when I could hear that his voice truly was the richest . . .

Got . . . to . . . concentrate!

Incomplete thoughts from the last week or so . . .

Last time I wrote, I was definitely biased toward Berkeley. But part of the reason is that I am afraid to look for a place on my own. Berkeley is easy; my friend is inviting me with open arms.

* * *

This weekend I went to the San Francisco Lyric Opera's performance of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. The beautiful, intimate, 300-person Gould Hall is beneath the Palace of the Legion of Honor in a dramatic park on the northwest corner of San Francisco. We drove down Geary, a long strip of a street that reminded me of Georgia and would be perfect for teenage cruising if the malls were ever torn down.

"We" consisted of a 97 Ford Escort (recently but only partially washed), me, and my new friend, a singer, a professional singer, a success at age 24 with the world already behind him—France, Russia, Japan, the United States—and all the world before him. A world of conservatories and universities, of stages, of lessons and master classes to give and take. He is someone—again—who cannot stop the forward flourishing of his life.

The Rape of Lucretia is, indeed, about a rape. It is Ancient Rome, and men are bitchin' about the loose ways of their women. It seems that only Lucretia is chaste. The prince of Rome has a way to solve this: ravish her at sword point. He does. She tells her husband, who sings that she did nothing wrong and all is forgotten, and then she stabs herself to death regardless. The chorus comes to some unnecessary conclusion about Christ and sings, "Is it all? It is all!" several times.

* * *

The apartment I looked at yesterday is certainly an option. It was genuinely exciting to realize that the lush grove just a block away was Golden Gate Park. It was also exciting to drive five or so blocks and see another park, the ocean, and a supermarket (Safeway—or Kroger, in the language of my native land).

Another person was there to see the apartment, a young man in sunglasses. We chatted while we waited for the realtor to show up. He gestured toward the wet horizon: "What is that?" It was an enormous mountain in the middle of the ocean. "Is that a ship?" The realtor arrived and unlocked a padlocked wooden fence onto a smallish, scraggly, but private yard. She opened the door of the apartment. The young man, mole-eyed with his sunglasses, fled. (Best of luck, Adam.)

The apartment was filthy, and not just from the current tenant. The appliances were centuries old, the carpet bland, the ceilings a touch low. But it was large and private enough for music.

* * *

What holds me up? A job that pays bills and gives me a place to go each day. A Georgia with a family and two friends who still feel connected to me. Two interests, writing and music, that keep me connected to half a dozen other people. A changing series of cultural events that expose me to the outer limits of striving and creativity. A couple friends and acquaintances.

It is frightening to move. I toss my hair for the camera and say my feet may lift and never come down again. "What holds me up" really ought to be "what holds me down."

New Home

Yes, my friends, I will be moving out to the country. To the Richmond district of San Francisco. A block from Golden Gate Park and half a dozen blocks to the Pacific Ocean. I will be moving here.

All my usual anxieties about houses will be following me, but I hope to document them here, in public. I will have to make my own decisions, but I will show you the untended garden, the white walls, and what I do with them.

A poem

Cemalettin


O Cemal—hill, rock, bomb, bludgeon,
all things hard, natural, destructive.
When they made robust men in Africa
they thought of you: your thick muscles,
your heavy brow. You stand at the fire
with your club raised against the jackals.
I, long-haired, know little of brutish things.
I tend to hearts, to the unborn and the bearing,
and spin tales over the pots.

O masculine adaptations! O Muslim, you
taught that the Koran is not a paperback
to be written in. You took me—“gay,” I said—
as your neighbor, your brother. I woke
one night to find you over me, god
leaning down, drawing a blanket to my chin
against the world where I was born.
You taught me more than books and learned men
that love was here before the pen
and suffers still from it.

Moving

I've become a crazy person lately. I say one thing one moment and the opposite the next. I'm broken up in February, back together in March, broken up again in April. I need more time to myself one day, I'm giddy on a date the next. I say I'm moving out by June, I say July. I put a deposit on a modern studio apartment in the piss-smelliest street in town, I cancel it the next day. I'll move to the coast, I'll move to Berkeley, I'll stay in the same neighborhood.

I am the plate spinning on a rod balanced on an acrobat's hand. What will keep me afloat and what will bring me down?

Smashing against the floor is not a possibility.

My main conflict—and it is a small one—is deciding where to live. And the main reason why the decision is difficult is that there are so many options, each with seemingly limitless pros and cons. For example: the Richmond district is quiet, close to the ocean, and beautiful, but it is further from town, there's less going on, and it's closest to sliding into the ocean.

Berkeley seems like a wise choice. I'd be living with a great creative friend in a healthy house surrounded by gardens and a view of the bay. I'd be free to practice flute with no concerns about disturbing neighbors, and I'd have access to a real, live piano (which I think would bring out the Beethoven and Debussy in me). Music would likely become an even more pointed focus of my energies, though the peace and remove of the house would likely inspire me to sit and write.

The drawbacks: an odd commute, nothing too bizarre, that requires me to navigate two miles of steep hill (by foot, car, or bus) to reach a train that will get me to work in half an hour. Also, a feeling that I'm fleeing "the City," retiring, returning to a suburban setting I'm more comfortable with. Also, a fear that I may not be strong and healthy and sane enough to join her household, that living together may damage our friendship.

The decision doesn't have to be made today or tomorrow, and few decisions are irreversible. Where would you live if you could choose?

In other news, it takes an awful lot of energy to boil eggs. Is it worth it?