Bach Cello Suites

The Bach Cello Suites remind me of mornings in our kitchen at home.  My father did (and still does) play classical music through the house on weekend mornings when he's making breakfast, when my mother and brother are talking about an essay or a physics problem, when we congregate by the woodstove to attempt the crossword.
Listening to them now, on a morning by myself in Chittick, watching the snow outside the window and melt onto the green grass and soaking pavement, I miss my family.  Sometimes there are pieces that are so reminiscent of moments that it's hard to bear, and I didn't realise it five minutes ago when I put it on, but this is definitely one of them.
Family, I miss you.

Paideia

Hi guys!
I'm back at school just in time for Paideia, the week of independent classes taught by faculty and students at Reed.  Today I'm going to a conference on Infinite Jest, hanging out with my girlfriends, and just enjoying my Portland life as much as possible before schoolwork catches up with me.
What are you doing this Tuesday?

(flowers in Paris, from here)

Leaving Home Again

On Sunday I head back to Reed.
On so many levels I don't want to go.  I haven't had enough time with my family, enough walks with Ursula to school.  I haven't played the piano enough, or read enough, or taken enough long luxurious baths.  I have not played even one game of scrabble with my family, and I have lost when we played Five Hundred.  I am not ready to get used to school again, to showers wearing flip-flops and Portland weather (which I love, don't get me wrong) and mountains of schoolwork (which I also love).  I just love my family, and the city where I grew up, and it feels that at this time I should be doing what I was doing last year, getting ready for my six miraculous months in Paris, not packing for college.  I want to spend long afternoons with the lovely Kuzu and Mike and Alexandra, talking, reading, cooking, doing the crossword.  I want to perfect my Chopin pieces until I can play them with my eyes closed, from memory. I want to write and sightread and arrange music and sing with my sister and dance around my brother's bedroom to French hip-hop.  I want to cook supper for my family and cookies for my sister's lunch.  There are so many things I want to do at home, so many things that I don't have time for.
At the same time, I know that school holds so much in store for me.  Paideia will occupy the first week of second semester, and I plan on taking classes on Infinite Jest, on reporting, and participating in a historical reenactment of the storming of the Bastille.  I miss my friends, and it will be nice to see them, to have late-night long talks in my bedroom and dance parties while cleaning the kitchen.  And I am excited for Aristophanes and Plato in the second semester of Humanities 110.
But I have not packed, because I do not want to leave.  We'll see where I am come Sunday.
Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

(Reed in the snow, from here)

Haiti

It has been two years since the earthquake in Haiti, the earthquake that took thirty-five seconds to change people's lives forever.
If you want to help, I suggest working with Partners In Health.

Boston-at-Large

This morning I took my music theory with me to Charles street, to sit in a café and look out at all the people on their way to work, writing in key signatures.  Boston is gorgeous in the morning - and I needed to do something besides sit in the house and play piano/be on the Internet/read all alone.
And today was a good day to do that.  Bright in a way that Portland is never bright, crisp and dry and cold, with salt bleaching the sidewalk in places, through the cold and dry Common down Comm Ave and Marlborough street and across the Mass Ave bridge.  I love walking through the city, through the Back Bay and down by the river - it makes me feel a million times more in touch with where I live.
Have a lovely Wednesday, everyone!

Hello World

Today I am nineteen years old.
It feels strange to type that, just like it was strange to wake up in the electric-blue gloaming morning light of New England to hear my family singing me "happy birthday" and bringing me breakfast in bed.  It's strange to check facebook and see a whole bunch of people writing on my wall.
Part of me wants this to be an exceptional day, a day where everything goes right.  But the rest of me is so happy with how it is right now.  I am sitting at our kitchen table, attempting bits of yesterday's crossword, emailing my friends, talking to my mother, who is working from home.  I have played a little bit of the piano (and failed).  I have not unpacked.
Today does not need to be filled with untold wonders and great surprises that make your heart sing.  It can be filled with charmingly domestic moments, like figuring out 105-across (Pass flying colors) and texting your best friends and Bach preludes.  And mostly, it's about being around my family.
Later today my darling friends (Kuzu and Mike and Edo and Alexandra) will come for dinner and I am ever so excited to see them.
Have a lovely day, everyone!

Lovely New York Weekend

Hi guys!
Last night I got back into South Station, courtesy of the Fung-Wah bus (which I was a little nervous about - a friend once regaled me with horror stories) just in time to attempt the crossword with my family at about ten-thirty.  I had an incredible weekend in Park Slope, Brooklyn with the incredible G, and these are some of the things we did:
We went to the lovely Café Regular du Nord, a coffeeshop that reminded me so much of Paris I almost cried...

(via)

We walked in the beautiful Prospect Park....

(It didn't look like this because it was winter, but still... via)

We ate (and spoke French at) Moutarde...

And did tons of other things, like walk the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and cross the bridge and see Madison Avenue with all the shops.  

Thank you, G, for an incredible weekend!