This and that
1. I made two identical pots of chicken soup: one for today, with barley in and therefore no longer soup but barley stew (sort of mess-of-pottagey, actually), and one for tomorrow, to go in the fridge and get its share of barley then. Still not quite as good as my mom's, but nice for a rainy February, I mean March, evening. Also featuring the incredible vanishing leeks: I put in TONS of leeks, or things in the supermarket called 岩津ネギ doing a good leek imitation, and they disappeared entirely in the final product, but probably contributed materially to the sweet/savory vegetably goodness.
2. I've been making the same damn decision (or being even less productive) every Sunday afternoon for about a million years: the next thing to do is set myself a timetable, or it'll never get done.
3. I figured out (though I'm sure it's not the actual historical explanation) why the Tragic Overture is tragic: it sounds all the way through as if things are going to work out and there's going to be a happy ending, and then at the very end it all comes crashing down. The end is that much worse because of all the hopeful major-key stuff earlier.
4. Oh my God, the trombones in the Brahms 4th (big Brahms day today). The whole symphony feels like it's beyond my powers of emotional understanding (like the hapless oboist who says "Natalie, this is bigger than both of us!" in that very good Ursula LeGuin short novel), which doesn't stop it from making me cry.
5. Have I been reading anything worth mentioning? I must have. Nothing comes to mind, except maybe the latest issue of Ookiku Furikabutte, which I'm reading very slowly because it's one of the game ones and they always make me tense. Someone--Mizutani?--says to himself, damn, it feels good doing something you know you can pull off because you've worked so hard at it.
Leave it at that for now.
2. I've been making the same damn decision (or being even less productive) every Sunday afternoon for about a million years: the next thing to do is set myself a timetable, or it'll never get done.
3. I figured out (though I'm sure it's not the actual historical explanation) why the Tragic Overture is tragic: it sounds all the way through as if things are going to work out and there's going to be a happy ending, and then at the very end it all comes crashing down. The end is that much worse because of all the hopeful major-key stuff earlier.
4. Oh my God, the trombones in the Brahms 4th (big Brahms day today). The whole symphony feels like it's beyond my powers of emotional understanding (like the hapless oboist who says "Natalie, this is bigger than both of us!" in that very good Ursula LeGuin short novel), which doesn't stop it from making me cry.
5. Have I been reading anything worth mentioning? I must have. Nothing comes to mind, except maybe the latest issue of Ookiku Furikabutte, which I'm reading very slowly because it's one of the game ones and they always make me tense. Someone--Mizutani?--says to himself, damn, it feels good doing something you know you can pull off because you've worked so hard at it.
Leave it at that for now.