finally, a break

Today has been a good day. I'm playing in a contemporary orchestra for my graduate assistantship, and it sounds like it will be really neat. Also, my Gender and Music class sounds like it is going to kick some major ass. The teacher was really energetic and cool today, I have a friend in the class, and it might just be what I need to realize some of the radical properties of what I do. Music has been very seperated from thoughts of the "political" sort these past few years, and I hope that this can bring them much closer together. That would make me really happy. And it doesn't have a final test, just a project (creativity! always a plus), so I will get a two-week spring break this year. We will be covering all sorts of things, from studies of how the gendered bodies of performers, composers, and audiences effect what happens to gender subversion and opera. Excellent.
I've also decided that, since I'm here anyway, I might a well just practice and make the most of being here. So I've been playing a lot more, and I feel a lot more like this isn't the worst idea I ever had. It's a big relief, to feel like this may all come to something if I just devote a couple of hours a day to it. Whew!
As a capstone to the day, it's snowing and we are supposed to have 6-10 inches by tomorrow night. I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but it is at least exciting.
Because it has been such a good day, here is a poem that makes me happy.

Mexicans in France
Sandra Cisneros

He says he likes Mexico.
Especially all that history.
That's what I understand
although my French
is not that good.

And wants to talk
about U.S. racism.
It's not often he meets Mexicans
in the south of France.

He remembers
a Mexican Marlon Brando once
on French tv.

How, in westerns,
the Mexicans are always
the bad guys. --And

Is it true
all Mexicans
carry knives?

I laugh.
--Lucky for you
I'm not carrying my knife
today.

He laughs too.
--I think
the knife you carry
is
abstract.